shotgun wedding

Definitions

1. A wedding in which the bride is already pregnant.
   idiomatic, slang
2. A wedding which is made in haste or under duress.
   idiomatic, slang
3. Any similarly reputedly forced partnership, between people, organizations, components, or concepts.
   idiomatic, slang

Equivalents

Examples

“If Red Skelton's joke can still elicit laughs, it is only because there is a minority who can still remember⟳ a shotgun wedding and even recall⟳ the understandings that lay⟳ behind that insistence, now seeming quaint, that a couple sleeping together should really be married.”

“But all this fails when we try⟳ to have⟳ a shotgun wedding between the two great theories of nature, relativity and quantum theory.”

CEFR level