Gretna Green

"Green at the gravelly hill", from Old English greot (“grit”) (in the dative form greoten) and hoh (“hill”).

Gretna Green

1. A village on the border between England and Scotland (in Dumfries and Galloway council area just inside Scotland), famous for easy marriages.

Gretna Green (plural Gretna Greens)

1. Any town with liberal marriage laws, a place where couples elope.
   • 1823 June 12, Lord Redesdale, “Dissenters' marriages”, in parliamentary debates (British House of Lords), page 16:

     It was nothing more nor less than to convert all places licensed under the Toleration Act into Gretna Greens, where persons of all persuasions might go and make irregular marriages.

   • Federal Writers Project (1952) West Virginia: A Guide to the Mountain State, →ISBN, page 485: “A town of narrow streets and smoke-begrimed old buildings, Wellsburg thrived as a Gretna Green for many years”
   • 1995, Suzanne Poirier, Chicago's War on Syphilis, 1937-40, →ISBN:

     The sexual irresponsibility attributed to most gin marriages could not help being linked with the possibility of a sexually transmitted infection that accompanied the couples, untested, to Crown Point, Valparaiso, or other Gretna Greens.

Gretna Green (not comparable)

1. carried out quickly and secretively in a jurisdiction that is not the bride or groom's own. (of a marriage)
   • 1833, R. Longley, private correspondence quoted in Peter Ward, Courtship, Love, and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century English Canada, page 110:

     There has been a Gretna Green marriage in Brockville. Miss Mary Ann Hall and a Mr. Underwood ran away to Ogdensburg (New York) and got married last week and was back again the night before last.

   • 1836 August, 'Orson', "East Florida—Alligators—the Seminoles, etc.", The Knickerbocker Magazine, page 150:

     He made a very pleasant morning's sport, especially as it was my first conquest, and entitled me to all the privileges of a Floridian. At this my favorite place of resort, a Gretna-Green affair happened, just before my arrival, and was witnessed by a companion who was often with me

   • 1861, "Three Months in Labrador", Harper's New Monthly Magazine, volume 22, page 757:

     Just beyond the portal is a cluster of islands, one of them, Gull Island, made famous by a Gretna Green affair of tragic end

• elopement
• shotgun wedding