mixed marriage

noun

plural mixed marriages
: a marriage between people of different races (see race entry 1 sense 1a) or religions

Examples of mixed marriage in a Sentence

a culture in which mixed marriage is rare
Recent Examples on the Web
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At the age of 16, the offspring of mixed marriages had to choose one of their parents’ ethnicities. Robert Hornsby, Foreign Affairs, 24 Oct. 2023 Edgar’s absorbing historical study of intermarriage is based on policy documents, Soviet ethnographic research, and over 80 in-depth interviews with members of mixed marriages and their adult children in the ethnically diverse Soviet republic of Kazakhstan and less diverse Tajikistan. Robert Hornsby, Foreign Affairs, 24 Oct. 2023 With so many men dead or enslaved, Native women married men outside their group—often African-Americans—and then redefined the families of mixed marriages as matrilineal in order to preserve collective claims to land. Philip Deloria, The New Yorker, 18 Nov. 2019 On the subject of mixed marriages like theirs, James Carville, one half of another famously bipartisan couple, liked to say that such unions are feasible, but perhaps not advisable. New York Times, 11 July 2018

Word History

First Known Use

1649, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of mixed marriage was in 1649

Dictionary Entries Near mixed marriage

Cite this Entry

“Mixed marriage.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mixed%20marriage. Accessed 21 Nov. 2024.

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