WotD: co-mother-in-law

[muckefuck]

1. die Gegenschwiegermutter
2. [n.a.]
3. la consuegra
4. la consogra
5. [n.a.]
6. [n.a.]
7. [n.a.]
8. współteściowa, współświekra
9. 안사돈 (안査頓)
10. 親家母 qīnjiāmǔ

Notes:8. Son's mother-in-law and daughter's mother-in-law, respectively. 9. May mean daughter's mother-in-law only; further investigation needed.


Credit lhn with this one. He was tickled to find that both Hindi and Hebrew shared a term for this. In case the English is unfamiliar to you (as it was to me), this entry is about how you would refer to the mother of the spouse of one of your children. I guess no one is surprised to find terms for this in the East Asian languages, whose kinship terminology is the stuff of legend, but it's interesting to see what European languages follow suit. I, for one, would not have guessed that such a term existed in German. (And lest you think it's just some academic construction, Googling turned up a Swabian dialect equivalent, Gegenschwiger.)

I'm less surprised by the Polish after having turned up a fearsome list of kinship terms during my brief study of the language. So far no joy elsewhere in northern Europe; in particular, the Celtic languages have always struck me as having a surprisingly impoverished vocabulary for this sort of thing despite retaining a predominately rural and family-based economy for so long. Even their terms for an ordinary mother-in-law (máthair chéile "mother [of a] spouse"; mam-yng-nghyfraith, an English calque) are recent and analytic.

(If you know of any other words, feel free to contribute them. The lack of a conventional English term makes it very difficult to use ordinary dictionaries to find them.)