The word "sibling" is not a naturally evolved English word but instead a modern revival of a lost Old English word generally meaning kins-person or relative rather than specifically referring to brothers and sisters.
This popped up from another blogger, who picked it out of a footnote from a book published in 1942:
Sibling is a coined word use by scientists for both brothers and sisters. The English language lacks such a word.I find this astonishing.
3 comments:
My immigrant dad thought it astonishing as well. Back in the days of the dinosaurs, when I was a child, the word "sibling" was not used in our part of the world. There was just a hole in our language. Dad would use the Swedish "syskon", and we knew what he meant. So! It is a new word in English. As you say, astonishing. MIL
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