ESL Blogs

There are several types of marriage, one of them being a shotgun marriage. Have you heard of such a word?

A wedding into which one or both partners are coerced, usually because the woman is pregnant is called a shotgun marriage or shotgun wedding.

This is an informal word. 

The father of the girl who became pregnant out of wedlock might threaten the man who was responsible for her pregnancy into marrying her by saying that he (father) would shoot him (the man responsible) to death unless he married her. From this the word might have originated.