Results of Poll by Email no. 16

        Twelve of you offered your suggestions for filling in English's lexical gap
for the non-gender plural of "nieces and nephews." Some were quite creative,
but the clear winner was "sibchildren", with four entries (if we update Joe's
suggestion to modern English).

        For the record, here are the suggestions:

Gustavo Eulalio: Sidesprings. "Offsprings come below you in the family
hierarchy, sidesprings would come beside, i.e., from your siblings."

Bruce Freedberg: Niephews.

Christophe Grandsire: Cousins. (Based on Dutch's usage of "neef" for both
nephew/niece and cousin.)

Stephen Degrace: Neppies.

And Rosta: Nepot.

David (DigitalScream@aol): Ninion (who notes that he's going to start using
this word, so if it makes its way into the dictionary, we know who to blame.)

Christopher Wright: "Niques /nai.kyuz/. It's a combination of the two words.
        Sichilen /sI.tSai.len/. Short for 'sibling's children'.
        Yaks /yEks/. See also 'kid'.
        Sharen /Sa.ren/. From 'children'."

Doug Dee: Niblings (niece/nephew+sibling), nousins (niece/nephew+cousins), or
sibchildren.

John Cowan: sibchild(ren)

Joe@wantage: Siblingshild. From OE 'siblinges cild', Sibling's Child.

Nik Taylor: Sibchild(ren) or Nephiece. Also gave reciprocal forms: "Unclaunt"
or "Patentsib."

Philip Newton: Sidechildren; he also attempted to fill out the lexical gaps in
English: "Another question might be whether side-children from your brother
should [or could] have another name from side-children from your
sister; if so, one could also use something like 'brildren' and
'sildren' to indicate that. (Or just use 'sildren' as a short form of
'side-children' from either sibling.)
        "Similarly, one could refer to one's relatives of one's parents'
generation as one's 'side-parents' (i.e. uncles and aunts), or
'farents' and 'marents' for uncles and aunts on one's father's
(mother's) side.
        "Each of the *ildren word would have a singular form ending in *ild,
which you could use, for example, if your sibling is expecting a baby
but you don't know its sex yet... 'I'm going to have a side-child [or
'sild'] soon; I'm going to be a side-parent for the first time.'"
        :Peter