Can anyone offer me an abbreviated method of describing a relative that is several generations removed, specifically (for example) a great-great-great-great-great-etc grandfather?

When referring to uncles, aunts and cousins the term "removed" is used to designate a difference in generation. For example your cousins child would be your first cousin once removed. Your child and your cousin's child would be second cousins. Your first cousin once removed's (I refuse to cross threads at this point) child would be your child's second cousin, once removed. And so on.

I have never heard the term applied to 1st degree relatives, but I see no reason why it couldn't be. Hence your grandfather could be your father, once removed, and your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather would be your father, 6-times removed.

Aside: what comes after thrice?

For example your cousins child would be your first cousin once removed

I found out last year that I was distantly related to one of my classmates. My great-great-great grandmother was his great-great grandmother. (I think.) What would that make us? I could never figure it out.

Third cousins once removed. To work it out
1. Count the number of greats from each of you to the common ancestor.
2. Add one to the smaller (or equal) number of greats. That will give you the x-th cousin bit (Think about it: grandparents make you 1st cousins, great-grandparents make you 2nd cousins, great-great-grandparents make you 3rd cousins and so on).
3. The number of additional greats in the bigger number of greats gives you the number of times removed.

In your example, Jazzo, the shorter chain is great-great grandmother. 2 greats + 1 makes you 3rd cousins. The longer chain is great-great-great-grandmother. That adds one more great so you're once removed.

Bingley

Aside: what comes after thrice?

An olympian

May it be with you!

http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwords/once

ANSWER: First cousins, twice removed


QUESTION: (we calculated this just Sunday, when updating geneological records) What is the relationship between my husband and Laura Ingalls Wilder?





I think that is so cool.

Here is a URL about ancestor terminology:
http://www.genealogy.com/genealogy/16_cousn.html

Sparteye! Hugs! Thrills! Dancing! Oh, I have MISSED you!
I love you! I don't want you to go away any more, please!

Oh, and er, IS he related to L. I. W.?

In reply to:

---

ANSWER: First cousins, twice removed


QUESTION: (we calculated this just Sunday, when updating geneological records) What is the relationship between my husband and Laura Ingalls Wilder?

---

Congratulations, I think.

Who?


Bingley

Bl*st! You beat me to it!

Congratulations, I think.
Well, thank you, Bingley--my mind was so overtaken by emotion that I missed the entire point of her post.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was the author of the popular Little House on the Prairie book series.

Well I had a vague sort of feeling that that's who she is (or was? No idea whether she's still with us). But then I thought surely a relationship with the purveyor of such unbearable tweeness would be something to hide rather than announce to the world. It's like being related the Waltons.

Bingley

Tweeness? (here's another one, mav.)

twee (twç)
adj. Chiefly British.
Overly precious or nice.

[Alteration of tweet, baby-talk alteration of SWEET.]


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Waltons - LMAO Bingley! But it *is lovely to see you back, Sparteye.

What is curious is that Laura didn't start to write until she was rather old.. at the urging of her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane-- who was a popular author of essays and light weight articles. (she wrote a very wonderful book on american handcrafts, exploring not only the the different handcrafts, but the histrory of the same, and how the crafts where changed by americans..) its not a dead serious treatise, but it is well done, nice researched, an easy read, filled with fun facts. she traces aspects of the american revolution through hand crafts.. (American's thinking, and artwork and hand crafts showed an independance from their English counterparts 100 years before we made this clear by declaring independance from England.)
an example was knitting.. which became a household skill in america, while it remained a guilded craft in england and europe. america's first knitters where trained in knitting guilds in Holland. but less than 50 year after the first euopeans were in america, knitting was a generic household skill- practiced by men and women alike!

Now days, Rose Wilder Lane is all but forgotten, and her mother -- who only got published because she could trade on the name her daughter had made is remembered..

twee

I just read a great bit of travel writing called "The Grand Tour" by Tim Moore. He's a Brit who decides to follow the route of Thomas Coryate, an early 17th Century tourist (perhaps one of the first, in the modern sense of the word) through the Continent. Blisteringly funny and occasionally insightful, and he uses "twee" (one of my favourite Britishisms) often, which is what made me think of it. I'd recommend it to anyone, particularly Americans. The book has been published here (and I got a copy in my local small-town library) but has clearly not been de-Anglicised -- to the extent that I missed several jokes because they were too British.

"Twee" has always been one of my favourite words, but I generally lack any opportunity to use it because my usual audience would need a definition.

The move to Mother England has, however, provided me with many, many more opportunities to want to use it!

And, Gymkhana, in relation to your original post, the answer is dead ...