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Your father's father is called your grand-father, yet your father's uncle is typically called your great-uncle (or so it seems with anybody I converse with). Why the inconsistency?

kguest
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1 Answers1

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There is no inconsistency. Grand is always used for "parent of a parent". Beyond that, great- and grand- mean the same thing. Your grandfather's brother is your great-uncle, grand-uncle, or granduncle.

It has been brought up in the comments that granduncle (written) is archaic everywhere, while grand-uncle (spoken) is archaic in Britain. I'm not sure if it's archaic in America too (I swear I've heard it), but you will not go wrong if you always use great-uncle.

Daniel
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user428517
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  • Curious, what does the "once removed" or "twice removed" mean? – Adam Aug 18 '14 at 19:54
  • once removed = 1 generation above or below. So my first cousin's son is my first cousin, once removed. That person's son is my first cousin, twice removed. – user428517 Aug 18 '14 at 19:56
  • aaand i just realized that doesn't apply here. not sure what i was thinking, but it's just grand uncle in this case. no removal. sorry about that. – user428517 Aug 18 '14 at 19:58
  • Thanks, I appreciate it. Not sure why you got downvoted. – Adam Aug 18 '14 at 19:59
  • well, it was wrong at first. no worries :) – user428517 Aug 18 '14 at 19:59
  • -1. You are incorrect. He is quite simply your 'great uncle'. The term 'once-removed' is used to indicate a generational distance between cousins. So you would, for example, call your father's cousin your 'cousin once removed'. Or your own cousins would be 'cousins once removed' to your children. I suppose you could call your 'great uncle' your 'uncle once removed', but since the term 'great-uncle' is available, it is not normally used. – WS2 Aug 18 '14 at 20:01
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    @ws2 yes, i already corrected my answer ... – user428517 Aug 18 '14 at 20:02
  • So, asides from grandparents', great- and grand- are interchangeable? I never knew that! :-) – kguest Aug 18 '14 at 20:04
  • @kguest yes, except for great-grandparents. grand-grandparents is not used, at least i haven't heard of it. it's also worth noting that you rarely hear (in the US at least) either "great" or "grand" other than in grandparent. people often will call their great-uncle their "uncle", and same for other great-relatives. – user428517 Aug 18 '14 at 20:05
  • @sgroves I have tried to remove my down vote but the system won't let me. The term grand-uncle is nowadays archaic. The most recent reference the OED has for it is dated 1881. The OED does not even recognise 'granduncle' without a hyphen. – WS2 Aug 18 '14 at 20:12
  • @ws2 i'm sure you're right; i've never seen granduncle, but it's in some dictionaries so i listed it. seems weird that grand-uncle/grand uncle is considered archaic though - i'm sure i've heard it used. maybe this is a regional difference? – user428517 Aug 18 '14 at 20:20
  • @sgroves It may be used in America, or some parts of America (I think the South is more likely to retain old forms isn't it?). But I have never heard it used in post-1945 Britain, though I have read it in older documents. Others may disagree. – WS2 Aug 18 '14 at 20:24
  • Minor points: Exceptions are inconsistencies, so if you say "great- and grand- mean the same thing, except in the case of parents of parents", then you're saying it's inconsistent. Worse, they don't really mean the same thing. You can't just use either one wherever you like. You never say great-grand-great-great-grandparent. Or grand-great-uncle. What I think you mean, and how the situation is conceptually more consistent, is that grandparent is its own first-class thing (not a one-level-higher parent), while great- is always a modifier to create a one-level-higher whatever. – John Y Aug 18 '14 at 22:00
  • @WS2 I've edited a minor detail, so you can now remove your vote. I think what happened is that sgroves fixed the error within the 5 minute grace period, so it didn't count as a separate edit, so your vote remained locked in. – Daniel Aug 18 '14 at 22:26
  • @Daniel Thankyou. Hope that's done the trick. – WS2 Aug 19 '14 at 06:22