kinship term

a word used by a culture to refer to a particular relative of a person (ego), cf. chapter 2, §4; in English the k. t. is distinguished by gender, but in the Yoruba culture the distinction is by relative age: an older sibling is an egbon and a younger sibling is an aburo; besides the gender, in the Roman culture the sides of the family are distinguished: a mother’s brother is an avunculus, but the brother of the father is a patruus.