sister-in-law
noun
Simple meaning
The wife of the sibling of one's spouse.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
sisterihnlawSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsɪstɚɪnlɔ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The sister of your spouse
The sister of the spouse of one's sibling.
The wife of the sibling of one's spouse.
A female relative of one's generation, separated by one degree of marriage
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Typical Use
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The sister of your spouse
Used this way, sister-in-law is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in relationships contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Relationships
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.