English

Etymology

From Middle English aunte, from Anglo-Norman aunte, from Old French ante, from Latin amita (“father's sister”). Displaced native Middle English modrie (“aunt”) (from Old English mōdriġe (“maternal aunt”); compare Old English faþu, faþe (“paternal aunt”)).

Notes on pronunciation and spelling

The digraph ⟨au⟩ representing /æ ~ ɑː/ (rather than /ɔː/) is irregular. It likely reflects a development of Middle English /au̯/ to [aː~æː] before /m n/ in some varieties of Early Modern English, which later came to be identified with either /æ/ or [æː] from pre-fricative lengthening (in the latter case, creating a phoneme /æː/; this is the basis of the bath lexical set). Such pronunciations historically competed with more learned ones where /au̯/ underwent its normal development to /ɔː/, with the standard language eventually adopting /æ ~ ɑː/ in words that came to be spelt with ⟨a⟩ and /ɔː/ in those which came to be spelt with ⟨au⟩ except in this word.[1][2] However, dialects may have /æ/ or /ɑː/ in other words such as launch, especially in the UK.

An alternative explanation derives /æ ~ ɑː/ in this word (and other instances of bath before /m n/) from a collateral Middle English form with /a/, which would've undergone lengthening before nasals analogous to that occuring before fricatives. Though such a collateral form may be ancestral to pronunciations with /a ~ æ/ in some varieties, this hypothesis cannot explain why inherited instances of bath before /m n/ only derive from Middle English words which had variants in /au̯m au̯n/.

Pronunciation

Noun

aunt (plural aunts)

  2. The sister or sister-in-law of one’s parent.
    • 1923, P.G. Wodehouse, The Inimitable Jeeves:
      As a rule, you see, I'm not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling to Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps and Uncle James's letter about Cousin Mabel's peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle... the clan has a tendency to ignore me.
  3. The female cousin or cousin-in-law of one’s parent.
  4. (endearing) A woman of an older generation than oneself, especially a friend of one's parents, by means of fictive kin.
  5. (obsolete) Any elderly woman.
  6. (obsolete) A procuress or bawd.
    • c. 1604–1606 (date written; published 1608), Thomas Middleton, “A Trick to Catch the Old One”, in A[rthur] H[enry] Bullen, editor, The Works of Thomas Middleton […] (The English Dramatists), volume II, London: John C. Nimmo […], published 1885, →OCLC, Act II, scene ii, page 267:
      I saw neither hope of his reclaiming, nor comfort in his being; and was it not then better bestowed upon his uncle than upon one of his aunts?—I need not say bawd, for every one knows what aunt stands for in the last translation.
      The spelling has been modernized.

Usage notes

Aunt is capitalized when it is used as a title with a name: Have you written to Aunt Jane?

Synonyms

Antonyms

Hypernyms

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Descendants

Translations

Several languages distinguish between blood aunts (one's parent's sister) and in-law aunts (one's parent's sister-in-law), some distinguish between paternal and maternal aunts, and some distinguish between one's parent's older siblings and younger siblings.

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

See also

References

  1. ^ Dobson, E[ric] J. (1957), English pronunciation 1500-1700‎[1], second edition, volume II: Phonology, Oxford: Clarendon Press, published 1968, →OCLC, § 239, page 793.
  2. ^ Luick, Karl (1929-1940), Herbert Wild, Friedrich Koziol, editors, Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache‎[2], Erster Band, II. Abteilung, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, published 1940, →OCLC, § 521, pages 644-645.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 The Dialect Survey of US pronunciations, archived on October 20, 2007

Further reading

Anagrams

Middle English

Noun

aunt

  1. alternative form of aunte
source: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aunt