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July 04, 2006
Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: co-brother
co-brother. /KOH·bru·thuhr/. How two men are related if they are married to sisters. There is no corresponding kinsip term in Anglo-American English, which prefers to cop out with the term brother-in-law, as best as I can tell. To see why brother-in-law doesn't quite work, consider this (admittedly wildly unlikely) scenario: if Patty Bouvier, Marge Simpson's sister in The Simpsons had a husband, then Homer Simpson and he would be co-brothers according to Indian English. Homer would be Patty's brother-in-law by blood because he is married to her sister by blood. However, in American English, Homer would be brother-in-law to both Patty and her husband, by blood to one and by marriage to another. A separate co-brother kinship term frees up brother-in-law to connote a by-blood sense alone. A co-brother is the by-marriage equivalent of a brother-in-law. Co-brothers are occasionally called co-sons-in-law, because together they are sons-in-law of the same set of in-laws. And in case you're wondering, de facto Indian English usage includes a female equivalent to co-brother: co-sister, used to refer to the relationship between two women who have married brothers.
Posted by Vishy at July 4, 2006 09:35 AM