mail-order bride

[meyl-awr-der brahyd]

noun

1. a woman who solicits or accepts a contractual marriage arranged by an agency or brokerage after a period of long-distance courtship, traditionally by written correspondence.

Word History and Origins

Origin of mail-order bride¹

First recorded in 1905–10

Example Sentences

I was a reverse mail-order bride, born in Belarus, now an American.

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I looked like a Russian mail-order bride.

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I leafed through headshots with a Russian mail-order bride while my parents drank tea with her mother.

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Poor Hank, inevitably stood up by his mail-order bride.

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He joked that Miss Dynasty is "a mail-order bride from China".

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