out of wedlock

1. 1.

   of biological parents not married to each other

   “this child was born illegitimately”

   Synonymsillegitimately
2. 2.

   of unwed parents

   “he was born out of wedlock”

   Synonymsoutside marriage

Questions about out of wedlock

What does out of wedlock mean?

out of wedlock means "of biological parents not married to each other". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for out of wedlock?

Close synonyms include illegitimately, outside marriage. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is out of wedlock a common word?

out of wedlock is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.