shotgun wedding
4
5.2
- noun
- /ˈʃɑtˌɡʌn ˈwɛdɪŋ/
- Informal
:
boda apresurada
- Yeah, I think that's what they call a shotgun wedding.
Examples
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I was hoping maybe there might be a shotgun wedding.
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Like a shotgun wedding, yeah.
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Turns out this is a shotgun wedding.
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Why not have a shotgun wedding?
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10 to one it's a shotgun wedding.
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This is no shotgun wedding.
Blog text (18) -
It had been a shotgun wedding.
Fiction book (1993) -
Think they'd be used to shotgun weddings around here.
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HaHa and Byul are planning to get married on November 30th of this year after dating for just a short 6 months, causing many to speculate whether this is a shotgun wedding.
Blog text (14) -
They decided to have a shotgun wedding after learning she was expecting a baby.
Surface Forms
Morphology
shotgun + wedding
The constituents 'shotgun' (a gun, implying force/urgency) and 'wedding' (a marriage event) give a strong hint of a forced or hurried marriage, so a learner could infer some coercive or urgent sense. However, the conventional sense — that the marriage is hurried specifically because the bride is pregnant — is cultural and not directly deducible from the parts, making the expression only partially transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Shotgun wedding may come from a strong image of a father with a shotgun forcing a quick wedding when a daughter became pregnant. That's why it means 'a hurried marriage', often because the bride is pregnant.