out of wedlock

Idioms  

1. 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.

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

out of wedlock

“If we see that 70% of households are raising children out of wedlock, that means 30% are not,” Mr. Woodson once told me.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 3, 2026

Hamilton was born out of wedlock on the island of Nevis in the British West Indies.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2025

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

Catherine gave birth in an orphanage in Dublin and, because of attitudes at the time about children born out of wedlock, she was coerced into giving Gladys up for adoption.

From BBC ● Sep. 20, 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