Our Familect Story

A familect is a portmanteau word formed by squashing together two words: family and dialect. It means words that a family uses that are not a part of a standard vocabulary. This story is about two words that my son Sergei invented, and twenty years later, my family still uses them.

As you might know, I was married three times, and I have two sons, from two different fathers. These fathers were also married several times and had other children. My two sons are half-brothers, and they also have half-siblings through their fathers. Thus a half-sister of a half-brother became a quarter-sister. Inventing this term was quite logical for a son of two mathematicians.

As you can imagine, our family tree is complicated. One day Sergei pointed out that our tree doesn’t look like a standard tree and called it a family bush.

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One Comment

  1. QM:

    Excellent! I’m sure your family wants to “hedge” your bets, and contribute more terms to the harmonic series.

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