How to Use unwed in a Sentence

unwed

adjective
  • The boy who was sold was born to an unwed teenage girl, Mandal said.
    — Vidhi Doshi, Washington Post, 6 July 2018
  • One of my mom’s good friends was also sent to a home for unwed mothers in that era.
    — Literary Hub, 24 Apr. 2026
  • There, the Catholic Church once ran homes for unwed mothers.
    — Greg Dixon, NPR, 31 Dec. 2025
  • But she wasn’t sent into a home for unwed mothers like the one in my book, and the one that your mom went to.
    — Literary Hub, 24 Apr. 2026
  • Sure, the unwed pregnant teen of the lyrics was keeping her baby, but gasp, the shame of it all.
    — Melissa Ruggieri, USA TODAY, 17 Aug. 2023
  • The previous year, the court sanctioned birth control for the unwed.
    — Erin Jensen, USA TODAY, 8 June 2022
  • The line was a reference to Bristol, who at the time was an unwed mother.
    — Brian Steinberg, Variety, 19 Sep. 2025
  • Many were unwed mothers whose babies were taken from them and given up for adoption.
    — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 Feb. 2024
  • As a result, couples are spending an increasing amount of their lives in the same home, but unwed.
    — Dan Kopf, Quartzy, 12 July 2019
  • In the event of death, however, that unwed status can make a huge difference.
    — Sarah O'Brien, CNBC, 26 Dec. 2025
  • In Ireland, the Catholic Church once ran homes for unwed mothers.
    — Greg Dixon, NPR, 25 Aug. 2025
  • What is more, an unwed, heterosexual man can only adopt a boy.
    — The Economist, 13 Jan. 2018
  • Social media profiles indicate that he was unwed at the time of his death and did not have any children.
    — Ilana Arougheti, Kansas City Star, 15 June 2026
  • The poverty rate for kids who are born to unwed teenage mothers who don’t finish high school is 78 percent.
    — Jennifer Wright, Harper's BAZAAR, 22 May 2018
  • Someone on the Ridge is murdering young unwed pregnant girls.
    — Lincee Ray, EW.com, 25 Apr. 2022
  • To protect the family’s social standing, she is sent to a home for unwed mothers.
    — Literary Hub, 1 July 2026
  • People were hard on unwed mothers back then, and my parents wanted to give Louise, his mom, a second chance.
    — Stephanie Nolasco, FOXNews.com, 14 Feb. 2026
  • Both of them shared a mother who gave her daughter up for adoption as an unwed mother in the 1930s.
    — Talis Shelbourne, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 7 Sep. 2019
  • She was born in a Texas home for unwed mothers and was stonewalled in every attempt to learn the identity of her mother.
    — Sam Whiting, San Francisco Chronicle, 23 Nov. 2022
  • Does the production clearly skewer the patriarchy that sells off unwed daughters for a dowry?
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 June 2022
  • Geraldine was an unwed teenager when Nakesha was born in 1970.
    — Benjamin Weiser, New York Times, 3 Mar. 2018
  • Her suitor’s Civil War death forces an unwed mother to let her married cousin raise her daughter.
    — Ed Stockly, Los Angeles Times, 12 Mar. 2021
  • Her family sent her to a home for unwed mothers (there were some 200 nationwide).
    — CBS News, 21 Mar. 2021
  • The numbers of unwed women – or women who simply never married – started to grow.
    — Amy Froide, The Conversation, 2 Dec. 2019
  • Both sets of parents were supportive and arranged for my girlfriend to enroll in what was at that time referred to as an unwed-mother’s home.
    — Amy Dickinson, Detroit Free Press, 2 Jan. 2018
  • Unlike Leckie, Duncan was, by the age of sixteen, an unwed mother.
    — Rivka Galchen, The New Yorker, 15 Jan. 2024
  • Like many babies born to unwed Irish mothers like Lorna, she was sold into adoption against her mother’s will.
    — Chris Vognar, New York Times, 18 Jan. 2024
  • There is no sense from any of the involved parties that Montessori can go on working either as a married woman or as an unwed mother.
    — Rivka Galchen, Harper’s Magazine , 18 Jan. 2022
  • The report proved all too prophetic, as the proportion of black children born to unwed mothers has soared to 80 percent in the decades since.
    — Mario Loyola, National Review, 20 Aug. 2020
  • Roman was born in 1942 in a home for unwed mothers and was dropped off at a Dallas orphanage as a child.
    — Angel Saunders, People.com, 25 Apr. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'unwed.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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