Brother and Sister-In-Laws

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Heather. I’m calling from San Diego.

Hey there, Heather. Welcome.

Hello.

What’s up?

Well, I have quite the debate going with my boyfriend, and I’m hoping you guys can settle the score, so to speak.

Oh, good. We will try.

We’re trying to determine when it’s appropriate to use the term like sister-in-law or brother-in-law versus saying my brother-in-law’s wife or my sister-in-law’s husband.

Okay, this is immediately complicated because the relationship terms are. So who is your brother-in-law?

Okay, let me give you a little context.

I don’t have any. However, my friend, Summer, she’s married to a man named Chad. Chad has a brother named David, and David is married to Terry.

And me and my boyfriend were discussing some of my friends, and he didn’t know who Terry was. And I said, oh, it’s Summer’s sister-in-law.

And he’s like, but wait, you know, Summer’s an only child. That can’t be possible.

And I said, oh, well, it’s Chad’s brother’s wife. And he said, well, then technically that’s her brother-in-law’s wife, not her sister-in-law.

Oh, I see. So let me just see if I can get this right.

Summer and Chad are married. Chad has a brother, David. David is married to a woman named Terry. And Summer said that Terry was her sister-in-law.

Yes.

Okay. Okay. And who are the different sides of the debate?

There’s me and my friends and family who agree that, yes, that it might be more correct to say brother-in-law’s wife, but nobody actually talks like that, and everybody would think that that’s her sister-in-law.

And my boyfriend and some of his colleagues say, no, no, no, you know, learn the English language that’s not correct, and it would be brother-in-law’s wife.

Interesting.

Oh, boy. This is really interesting because both parties are right.

We look at common uses across the billions and trillions of words that people use, and that’s how we vote, and that’s where we get right and wrong when it comes to language.

And here’s why you’re both right. A sister-in-law can be the sister of your spouse, the spouse of your sibling, right, or the sister of your sister-in-law or your brother-in-law.

So it’s very complicated here.

Right. And I, you know, I sometimes confuse people I don’t know well because I’m not married and I’ll talk about my sister-in-law and I’ll get a look.

I mean, I wish we had a more specific term in English for it.

So the clear thing here is like sister-in-law isn’t just that one relationship. It isn’t only the sibling of your spouse. All right.

Right. A sister-in-law is not just the sister of your spouse.

And that’s the mistake that your your opponents in this argument are making. They think it’s very specific when it’s actually broader than that.

It’s much broader.

Yeah, after talking with friends and family, we kind of came to this consensus that it depended on how close you were to the person.

For instance, in this scenario, Summer and Carrie are like best friends. So, of course, she would just call her sister-in-law, where maybe if it was a relative she wasn’t very close with or maybe even fond of, she might take the longer route and refer to her as brother-in-law’s wife.

I don’t have any data on that, but that makes a lot of sense to me. I could actually see that being true.

Now, on the other hand, our brother-in-law’s sister is fine, too, because it’s technically correct. It’s just not as—

It’s a mouthful.

Yeah, it’s a mouthful. It’s more formal, a little less polite, probably.

Probably just not getting the force of the relationship across.

You can say co-sibling-in-law, which kind of covers the bases as well.

Oh, wow. Co-sibling-in-law.

Now, that sounds formal or made up. But I have my final word for you that you could just, just to clarify all this, is the more generic term for these people that you’re related to by marriage but not blood.

And these are your affines. A-F-F-I-N-E-S. Affines.

Yeah. A-F-F-I-N-E-S.

Wow, I think I’ve never heard that word again.

I know, right? It’s pretty common.

Yes, this is our job. We bring new things to light. I’m writing this down.

But in general, Heather, I think you’re totally fine. You’re more right than they are, I think.

But they had one particular point, which I thought that they were being incorrect about, which is they’re being overly specific.

Cool.

Okay. Okay, Heather, take that back to the Klan. If you need a place to stay when they kick you out, call Martha. You can stay with me.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye, Heather.

Cheers.

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