unwed
pronunciation
How to pronounce unwed in British English:
UK [ʌn'wed]
How to pronounce unwed in American English:
US [ʌn'wed]
-
- Adjective:
- of someone who has not been married
Word Origin
- unwed (adj.)
- 1510s, from un- (1) "not" + past participle of wed (v.). Unwedded "unmarried; celibate" is from c. 1200.
Example
- 1. According to cherlin , many of those children probably were born to cohabitating , but unwed couples .
- 2. Her parents were a soldier and an unwed teenage mother .
- 3. As the new york times notes , out-of-wedlock births are increasing in much of the developed world-for example , over half of babies in iceland and sweden are born to unwed mothers .
- 4. Born to an unwed teenage mother in rural mississippi she spent her earliest years on her grandmother 's farm in a house without electricity or running water and with an outhouse in the yard and a big pot for boiling clothes on the back porch .
- 5. About 29 percent of children under 18 now live with a parent or parents who are unwed or no longer married , a fivefold increase from 1960 , according to the pew report being released thursday .