marriage of convenience
"marriage-of-convenience" is a 21-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“marriage of convenience” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 23
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - 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.
Corpus desk
Index EN-marriage-of-convenience · marriage of convenience · English
marriage of convenience · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 23 letters
- VOW-10 10 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "M" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | marriage of convenience |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 23 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “marriage of convenience” in English
Rare enough to double-check
marriage of convenience is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for marriage of convenience, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: Calque of French mariage de convenance. The correct English form is marriage of convenience, spelled M-A-R-R-I-A-G-E- -O-F- -C-O-N-V-E-N-I-E-N-C-E.
Definition
- 1A 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.
- 2A big tent alliance of disparate factions (such as political factions).
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how marriage of convenience appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
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 few years so I can start a new life elsewhere.
Libertarians and the Religious Right make odd bedfellows, but that marriage of convenience in the Republican Party has stuck around since the 1980s.
Etymology
Calque of French mariage de convenance.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.