Synonyms

out of wedlock

Idioms

Of parents not legally married, as in Over the centuries many royal children were born out of wedlock. The noun wedlock, for the state of being married, is rarely heard today except in this phrase, first recorded in 1675; its converse, in wedlock, dates from the 1300s and is even more rarely used.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

out of wedlock

An account of the candidate’s old-fashioned embarrassment, expressed to Mr. Devine, about having a child out of wedlock is practically endearing.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026

Maternity homes were popular before Roe as a place where usually teen mothers went to secretly have babies that were conceived out of wedlock.

From Slate ● Jun. 24, 2025

A small-town kid born out of wedlock, he moved from the rustic countryside of Vinci, 30 miles west of Florence, to the sophisticated city to make his way.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 18, 2024

One was from Dino Sajudin, a former Trump Tower doorman, who Mr Pecker said tried to sell an article in 2015 about an unsubstantiated rumour that Mr Trump once fathered a child out of wedlock.

From BBC ● Apr. 23, 2024

And while children born out of wedlock were common during this time, children who grew to manhood in less than two months were not.

From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023