Today, ‘sibling’ is one of the most basic kinship terms. However, it wasn't introduced into English until 1903 by a pair of scientists working on genetics. More accurately, ‘sibling’ was reintroduced into the language after 1,000 years of dormancy. In this episode, we look at ‘sibling’ in its Old English context and explore its Indo-European roots. Furthermore, we look into the etymology of ‘brother’ and ‘sister.’
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In today's episode, we explore the origins of some of the universal characteristics of nursery father terms in languages from around the world, most of which include initial /p/, /d/, or /b/ sounds.
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