unwed

adjectiveB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,475 of 15,258neutral

Unwed means not married. An unwed mother, unwed couples, remained unwed.

It is dated and carries the judgement of an era, since unwed mother was an official category used to justify a great deal of cruelty. Unmarried is the neutral word now, and single is commoner still.

Definitions of unwed

1adjectiveunwedNot married.B2+
“In the old village, an unwed couple living together caused a scandal.”

unwed is a state.

Also accepted in games: unmarried

Where it comes from

Proto-Indo-European
*wedʰ- — to pledge
Proto-Germanic
*wadjōną — to pledge
Proto-West Germanic
*waddjōn
Old English
weddian — to pledge; wed
Middle English
wedden
English
wed
English, today
unwed

Built from

*wadją · Proto-Germanic — pledge

From un- + wed. wed comes from Middle English wedden, weddien, from Old English weddian (“to pledge; wed”), from Proto-West Germanic waddjōn, from Proto-Germanic wadjōną (“to pledge”), from wadją (“pledge”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European wedʰ- (“to pledge”). Cognate with Scots wed, wod, wad (“to wed”), stq wädje (“to bet, wager”), West Frisian wedzje (“to bet, wager”), Low German and Dutch wedden (“to bet”), German wetten (“to bet”), Danish vædde (“to bet”), Swedish vädja (“to appeal”), Icelandic veðja (“to bet”); more distantly, to Sanskrit वधू (“bride”). Related also to gage, engage, and wage.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

unwed in the wild

Cahill, which is based on the true story of the Ideal Maternity Home, a home for unwed pregnant mothers, during the Great Depression and Second World War.
Butterbox Babies
From 1840, in collaboration with Ignace Bourget (then Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Montreal), she engaged in the charitable care of unwed mothers.
Marie-Rosalie Cadron-Jetté
During a time when maternity homes for unwed mothers were for white women only, she opened her home to unwed mothers of color.
Ionia Rollin Whipper
If Graham, a bachelor, had secured the nomination he would have been the first unwed individual to receive a major-party nomination since unwed divorcee Adlai Stevenson II.
Lindsey Graham 2016 presidential campaign
Several organizations have been created to support unwed mothers and combat stigma.
Adoption in South Korea

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the weddian family

wed unwed

unwed — used about once every 6,207 pages · #10,475 · point at the bar for the others

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