Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A relative by marriage.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A person who is related by marriage, as distinguished from a blood relative; esp. mother-in-law (the mother of one's spouse), father-in-law (the father of one's spouse), brother-in-law (the brother of one's spouse, or husband of one's spouse's sister), sister-in-law (the sister of one's spouse, or wife of one's spouse's brother).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A relative by marriage (or through affinity). Affinal relative; affine.
  • noun Sometimes specifically a parent-in-law of one's child, for which the dedicated terms co-mother-in-law, co-father-in-law are rare

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a relative by marriage

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Back-formation from such compounds as mother-in-law.]

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