Word.ws English Dictionary

marriages of convenience

marriages of convenience is the plural of marriage of convenience.

Meaning of marriage of convenience

Noun

marriage of convenience (plural marriages of convenience)

  1. A marriage motivated by some reason other than love; for example, one conducted to obtain residence rights in a country, for financial gain, or for political purposes.
    • Widely published author and business consultant would like a marriage of convenience with a woman who is an Irish or Austrian citizen. You get legal resident status in U.S. (and eligibility for student aid), and I get eligibility for prison furloughs plus the citizenship of a neutral country in a...1988 April 23, Adam Starchild, “Personal Advertisement”, in Gay Community News, page 14
    Synonyms:
    mariage de convenance
  2. (figuratively) A big tent alliance of disparate factions (such as political factions).
    • Libertarians and the Religious Right make odd bedfellows, but that marriage of convenience in the Republican Party has stuck around since the 1980s.

Questions about marriages of convenience

What is marriages of convenience the plural of?
Marriages of convenience is the plural of marriage of convenience.

Words near marriages of convenience in the dictionary

  1. marriageably
  2. marriageless
  3. marriagelessness
  4. marriagelike
  5. marriages
  6. marriages of convenience
  7. marriage–industrial complex
  8. marriage–industrial complexes
  9. Marrick
  10. Marrickville
  11. marrie

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: marriages of convenience (page history and authors); marriage of convenience (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: “marriages of convenience.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/marriages_of_convenience. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.