uncle
NounOpen English WordNet
Noun (2)uncles
- the brother of your father or mother; the husband of your auntOpposite auntType of kinsmanKinds great-uncle, granduncle
- a source of help and advice and encouragement“he played uncle to lonely students”Type of benefactor, man
What does it mean? Question 1 of today’s quiz
Translations
Noun brother of someone’s parent
- Spanish
- tío
- French
- oncle
- German
- Onkel
- Italian
- zio
- Portuguese
- tio
- Turkish
- amca
- Russian
- дя́дя djádja
- Arabic
- عَمّ ʕamm
- Chinese
- 叔叔 shūshu
- Japanese
- おじ oji
35 more languages
- Dutch
- oom
- Polish
- wujek
- Swedish
- onkel
- Greek
- θείος theíos
- Korean
- 삼촌 samchon
- Indonesian
- paman
- Vietnamese
- bác
- Hungarian
- nagybácsi
- Portuguese (PT)
- tio
- Chinese (Trad.)
- 叔叔 shūshu
- Albanian
- xhaxha
- Breton
- eontr
- Catalan
- oncle
- Czech
- strýc
- Danish
- onkel
- Esperanto
- onklo
- Estonian
- onu
- Finnish
- eno
- Georgian
- ბიძა biʒa
- Hebrew
- דּוֹד dod
- Icelandic
- frændi
- Kurdish
- xal
- Latvian
- tēvocis
- Lithuanian
- dėdė
- Malagasy
- dadatoa
- Norwegian
- onkel
- Romanian
- unchi
- Scottish Gaelic
- bràthair-athar
- Serbo-Croatian
- stric
- Slovak
- strýko
- Slovenian
- stric
- Swahili
- mjomba
- Walloon
- mononke
- Welsh
- ewythr
- Yiddish
- פֿעטער feter
The main translation for each meaning, from the langtolang.com multilingual dictionary. Each word links to its full entry there.
Webster's Dictionary (1913)
Origin: OE. uncle, OF. oncle, uncle, F. oncle, fr. L. avunculus a maternal uncle, dim. of avus a grandfather; akin to Lith. avynas uncle, Goth. aw… grandmother, Icel. āi great grandfather.
1. The brother of one's father or mother; also applied to an aunt's husband; — the correlative of aunt in sex, and of nephew and niece in relationship.
2. A pawnbroker. slang William M. Thackeray
3. An eldery man; — used chiefly as a kindly or familiar appellation, esp. Southern U. S. for a worthy old negro; as, “Uncle Remus.” colloquial
Plain old uncle as he [Socrates] was, with his great ears, — an immense talker.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
My uncle, a pawnbroker. slang — Uncle Sam, a humorous appellation given to the United States Government. See Uncle Sam, in Dictionary of Noted Names in Fiction.
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), from GCIDE 0.54 · with additions: 1913 supplement