Quote Originally Posted by Serpentine View Post
Ah right, yeah, sorry. I did come across pibling. That seems to be a recent invention, along with something like "auncle".
It's odd, the things English genders and the things it doesn't, and the ones that change over time (eg "girl" used to be neuter).

So let's see, we have:

Son/Daughter/Offspring - Old English from "off-spring" - or Progeny - From Latin for "beget" via Old French (or child, spawn, etc)
Mother/Father/Parent - From Latin for "bring forth" via Old French
Brother/Sister/Sibling - Old English for any relative
Niece/Nephew/Nibling? - apparently goes back to 1951 and coined by a linguist, so that's not a bad provenance really
Uncle/Aunt/??Pibling - From Urban Dictionary. Hmm.
??/??/Cousin - From Latin for "cousin", go figure, via Old French.
Husband/Wife/Spouse - From Latin for "betrothed" via Old French

So it seems like Old French might be worth plundering if it has something for these missing words... Any Old French speakers in the Playground?
I speak modern French? "spouse" probably comes from what is now "épouse" (female word for spouse, the male one being "époux") and "cousin" is the male form of "cousin" (the female form being "cousine". We don't have a gender neutral for sibling, cousin, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew or spouse. We have "parent" and "child" which are gender-neutral though. I don't think French will be much help here :P