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stranger
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The word "orthocousin" describes cousins whose related parents are of the same sex. My brother's children and mine are orthocousins since we're both male. My sister's children and mine are not. Is there a word for cousins whose related parents are of opposite sexes? I've now got an anthropologist on our campus wondering too, so for the help of our curiosity bumps, HELP! By the way, this all started with a discussion of the meaning of the prefixes ortho-, para-, and meta-.
George F. Feissner
Math. Dept.
SUNY College at Cortland
Cortland, NY 13045
George F. Feissner
Math. Dept.
SUNY College at Cortland
Cortland, NY 13045
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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welcome, George!
boy, that's a rare word. barely shows up on Google, and I couldn't find it in any of the usual dictionaries. tsuwm needs to take a gander.
so what's the antonym of ortho?
formerly known as etaoin...
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stranger
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I guessed heterocousin, but that's not in the OED. Ortho seems to mean "right, proper, correct, normal" as in "orthodox". Meta suggests a change (in place, order, condition, or nature), while Para suggests variation, simulation, a subsidiary relationship, or even a perversion (task of the day: drop parabaptism into a conversation). I guess the above is a prolix way of saying I don't know what the opposite of ortho is.
George F. Feissner
Math. Dept.
SUNY College at Cortland
Cortland, NY 13045
George F. Feissner
Math. Dept.
SUNY College at Cortland
Cortland, NY 13045
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Joined: Jun 2002
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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yeah, I ran into hetero in a search, too. also "caco" meaning bad. of course, there's always "unortho" but...
formerly known as etaoin...
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Carpal Tunnel
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I was an anthro major time back way back. We never used the term orthocousin. The term we used for what you're calling orthocousins was parallel cousins. The other term was cross cousins.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Welcome, George; the on-line Compact Oxford English Dictionary gives these def.'s:
ortho-
• combining form 1 straight; rectangular; upright: orthodontics. 2 correct: orthography.
— ORIGIN from Greek orthos ‘straight, right’.
meta-
(also met- before a vowel or h)
• combining form forming words referring to: 1 a change of position or condition: metamorphosis. 2 position behind, after, or beyond: metacarpus. 3 something of a higher or second-order kind: metalanguage.
— ORIGIN from Greek meta ‘with, across, or after’.
para-
(also par-)
• prefix 1 beside; adjacent to: parathyroid. 2 beyond or distinct from, but comparable to: paramilitary.
— ORIGIN from Greek para ‘beside, beyond’. Goodness gracious--aren't you glad you don't have to learn these?: http://www.saskschools.ca/curr_content/creeunit/possessive_form_cousins.htmHmm--looks like the antonym of orthocousin may in fact be cross cousin; see the second paragraph: http://ourancestry.com/cousins.html
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Welcome George - thanks for introducing a whole new bunch of terminology to me at least!
> Agrees with what the inestimable Faldage said
Great site - thanks TEd. But surely it only half agrees with m'inestimable friend? It says that ortho-cousins describes those children born to a pair of same-sex siblings, and cross-cousins are those born to a brother and sister, surely?
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yes, OED2 has ortho-cousin listed under ortho- n. Anthropol. = parallel cousin s.v. PARALLEL 4a. >> 4. a. parallel cousin = ortho-cousin (ORTHO 1).
1936 R. FIRTH We, the Tikopia vi. 221 The differentiation between cross-cousin and parallel cousin is certainly not one of the outstanding features of the Tikopia kinship system. 1949 F. EGGAN in M. Fortes Social Struct. 124 Parallel cousins are treated as siblings, whereas cross~cousins are differentiated. 1970 E. LEACH Lévi-Strauss 121 A parallel cousin..is a cousin of the type ‘mother's sister's child’ or ‘father's brother's child’. 1972 [see ortho-cousin s.v. ORTHO- 1].
>>cross-cousin, one of two cousins who are the children of a brother and a sister respectively; also attrib. in cross-cousin marriage
going back to ortho-, this gives some insight into how there came to be two terms for this one:
1918 J. G. FRAZER Folk-lore in Old Test. II. II. vi. 98 It has become customary to call the marriageable cousins cross-cousins, because..the related parents are of opposite or cross sexes. There has hitherto been no special name for the unmarriageable cousins, the children of two brothers or of two sisters, but for convenience I propose to call them *ortho-cousins to distinguish them from cross-cousins. In the case of ortho-cousins the related parents are of the same sex. 1932 Brit. Jrnl. Psychol. Jan. 265 All ortho-cousins are forbidden, while cross-cousins are considered suitable mates. 1972 D. DAVIES Dict. Anthropol. 141 Ortho-Cousin, a term little used now,..can be a synonym for parallel cousin..or for a parallel cousin of the same unilineal descent..group as the person concerned.
as we've often seen here, neologisms don't automatically generate universal favor.
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Carpal Tunnel
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>Great site - thanks TEd. But surely it only half agrees with m'inestimable friend? It says that ortho-cousins describes those children born to a pair of same-sex siblings, and cross-cousins are those born to a brother and sister, surely?
Isn't that what Faldage said? I interpreted his post to mean that ortho-cousins are the children of two brothers or two sisters and that cross-cousins are the children of brother and sister.
Among other things I found very interesting in this exercise that there is such a huge disparrity in Ghits between orthocousin and ortho-cousin.
But I'm still trying to figure out what the heck difference it makes if you and that other person are ortho-cousins or cross-cousins. For what possible reason could there be a distinction. I would have been less surprised to see that there were different designations for boy-cousins and girl-cousins.
TEd
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