couple-beggar
couple-beggar noun: one who, for a fee, performs an unauthorised wedding service, especially for poor people (originally beggars).
Noun
couple-beggar (plural couple-beggars)
- One who, for a fee, performs an unauthorised wedding service, especially for poor people (originally beggars).
- Yet you'd have no license, but be married by beggarly bans ! [...] Sure it's wonderful you don't seek out a couple-beggar, and get married like the heathens in the time of Nebecudnazar !1836, Mrs S.C. Hall, Harry O'Reardon, Or, Illustrations of Irish Pride, page 13
- these destitute paupers believed themselves to be married, since they had paid a small sum of money to a 'couple beggar' and in return he performed a rudimentary ritual over them.1994, Dympna McLoughlin, “Women and sexuality in nineteenth century Ireland”, in The Irish Journal of Psychology, volume 15, pages 266–275
- Synonyms:
- buckle-beggar
Synonyms of couple-beggar
Forms of couple-beggar
| plural | couple-beggars |
|---|
Origin of couple-beggar
Originally a verb-noun compound, "one who couples beggars"; later extended to cases where the spouses were not destitute.
Questions about couple-beggar
- What does couple-beggar mean?
- Couple-beggar means one who, for a fee, performs an unauthorised wedding service, especially for poor people (originally beggars).
- What part of speech is couple-beggar?
- Couple-beggar is a noun.
- What is the plural of couple-beggar?
- The plural of couple-beggar is couple-beggars.
Words near couple-beggar in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: couple-beggar (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “couple-beggar.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/couple-beggar. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.