Re: Brothers-in-law

Nik Taylor wrote:
> Tristan Alexander McLeay wrote:
>> Well, there's also defacto in-laws. And even someone who's not in a
>> defacto relationship but just has a boy-/girlfriend will describe
>> their other's parents as in-laws so to me it is a nice example of
>> fossilisation & semantic drift.
>>
>> For that matter I think at least in (some states of?) Australia,
>> "defacto" relationships have some sort of recognition in law so
>> they're not really "de facto" relationships. I love it when semantic
>> drift does these things, and this seems to be a domain in which they'd
>> be very common.
>
> Some US states have a similar status, known as "Common law marriages",
> though, most states have since repealed common-law marriage laws
> (though, of course, relationships that qualified as common-law marriages
> prior to the repeal generally retain that status)
>
>
I once heard a man refer to his daughter's boyfriend as his "son-out-law".

- Tim

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