to wait until marriage
- phrasal verb
- NSFW
- The campaign's goal is to promote the idea of waiting until marriage for young people.
- wait until marriage to have sex
It's unloving to expect some guy to white knuckle his way through high school and college and to wait until marriage.
- It's unloving to expect some guy to white knuckle his way through high school and college and to wait until marriage.
- The whole abstinence thing and waiting until marriage like is the only answer for him just kind of made me feel like he was playing the game too hard.
Examples
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It worked well for us, but my default position is still to wait until marriage (or at least engagement) to live together.
Blog text (24) -
Not all Christians (gay or straight) believe in waiting until marriage, and studies show that even those who do believe in it usually fail to live up to their own standards.
Blog text (13) -
I just... Always knew I wanted to wait until marriage.
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and because it is best to wait until marriage!
Blog text (8) -
Many do wait until marriage.
Blog text (22) -
The programs are meant to teach young people to wait until marriage to lose their virginity.
Blog text (27) -
I know one Southern Baptist couple that waited until marriage, but that's it.
Blog text (11) -
Many religious groups encourage couples to wait until marriage to engage in sexual relations.
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She decided to wait until marriage to lose her virginity, following her personal beliefs.
Synonyms
To wait before doing something
How Long
Surface Forms
Morphology
The core meaning — to postpone something until the time of marriage — is directly and transparently derived from 'wait' (postpone) + 'until' (up to the time of) + 'marriage' (the wedding/union), so a B1 learner who knows the parts will understand the temporal/compositional sense. The specifically sexual implication is a pragmatic extension that requires discourse context, but the basic instructive meaning is compositional and therefore transparent.
Etymology
Wait until marriage comes from the simple idea of choosing to wait until marriage before you 'have sex'. Like a closed gift saved for the wedding, it means 'to wait to have sex until after you are married'.