Originally Posted by
Serpentine
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?