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uncle
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
uncle
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
Uncle Sam
Uncle Tom
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
great
▪ But at least they would clarify the current situation and offer the Prince a place in history alongside his great uncle.
▪ I remember my great uncle being asked whether my brother would make a surgeon.
▪ He was the great uncle of Joseph Rank, the miller.
maternal
▪ His maternal uncle, William Dauney, had been an architect in Aberdeen.
▪ Even during the operation, performed by other maternal uncles, there is much talking, humour and giving of advice.
▪ What is to be made of this extraordinary permissiveness on the part of the maternal uncle?
old
▪ And my old uncle, the priest in Belfast I lived with as a boy.
▪ Not them, nor the dress, nor the old aunts and uncles, nothing like that.
▪ Beer and whisky make your old uncle frisky.
▪ And your old uncle is having the time of his life, and wishes he could write better letters.
▪ Why did you leave me with your silly old uncle?
■ VERB
kill
▪ A severe drenching would kill his uncle.
▪ After my parents were killed, my uncle stepped into my life and raised me as a daughter.
▪ He wants to kill his uncle, but he can't.
▪ Grown to young manhood, Krishna killed his tyrant uncle and won universal renown.
▪ That he wanted her uncle to kill him so that her uncle would be damned.
leave
▪ But true to his word, before I left, my uncle gave me help.
▪ Her complexion was still a heightened pink when Naylor left his uncle and came over to her.
live
▪ Wainewright thought he could improve his situation by going to live with his uncle in a large-ish house in Chiswick.
▪ Her family sent her to live with her uncle, before the emperor could be alerted.
▪ The narrator of the Fiction, Philip Parrish, is an orphan living with his uncle but with many brothers scattered elsewhere.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
Bob's your uncle!
old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all
paternal grandmother/uncle etc
▪ At the home of his paternal uncle he was very much at home.
▪ C.'s paternal grandmother applied for residence and contact.
▪ In 1989 T. moved to live with her paternal grandmother and a year later she went to live with her boyfriend.
▪ The boy's paternal grandmother had unsuccessfully applied for a residence order.
▪ The boy's father and paternal grandmother applied, interalia, for an order for the boy to reside with the grandmother.
▪ The infant girl was immediately named Margarett Williams Sargent for her paternal grandmother, who was eighty-three and ailing.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Uncle Roscoe
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Another uncle, Ignacio, offers to take Manuel Gustavo on as his own illegitimate son.
▪ Come to that, she had only one uncle, her father's brother Eric, and she hardly ever saw him.
▪ His maternal uncle, William Dauney, had been an architect in Aberdeen.
▪ I remember two aunts and an uncle, all very dear to me, dying within a few months.
▪ Suppose your favorite uncle proudly tells you that your birthday present is a subscription to the Salmon of the Month Club.
▪ The years hold little joy for Jacob, who meets a crooked dealer after his own kind in his uncle Laban.
▪ Which uncle had told him that was a fatal mistake?
▪ You shall visit your aunt and uncle.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Uncle

Uncle \Un"cle\, n. [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.

  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]
    --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.'' [Colloq.]

    Plain old uncle as he [Socrates] was, with his great ears, -- an immense talker.
    --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.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
uncle

late 13c., from Old French oncle, from Latin avunculus "mother's brother" ("father's brother" was patruus), literally "little grandfather," diminutive of avus "grandfather," from PIE root *awo- "grandfather, adult male relative other than one's father" (cognates: Armenian hav "grandfather," Lithuanian avynas "maternal uncle," Old Church Slavonic uji "uncle," Welsh ewythr "uncle").\n

\nReplaced Old English eam (usually maternal; paternal uncle was fædera), which represents the Germanic form of the root (cognates: Dutch oom, Old High German oheim "maternal uncle," German Ohm "uncle").\n

\nAlso from French are German, Danish, Swedish onkel. As a familiar title of address to an old man, attested by 1793; in the U.S. South, especially "a kindly title for a worthy old negro" [Century Dictionary]. First record of Dutch uncle (and his blunt, stern, benevolent advice) is from 1838; Welsh uncle (1747) was the male first cousin of one's parent. To say uncle as a sign of submission in a fight is North American, attested from 1909, of uncertain signification.

Related phrases:
Wiktionary
uncle

interj. A cry used to indicate surrender. n. 1 A brother or brother-in-law of someone’s parent. 2 (lb en euphemistic) A companion to one's (usually unmarried) mother. 3 (lb en figuratively) A source of advice, encouragement, or help. 4 (lb en British informal) A pawnbroker. 5 (lb en Southern US and parts of UK colloquial) A close male friend of the parents of a family. 6 (lb en Southern US slang archaic) an older male African-American person 7 (lb en Asia slang) (non-gloss definition: An affectionate name for an older man.)

Related phrases:
WordNet
uncle

  1. n. the brother of your father or mother; the husband of your aunt [ant: aunt]

  2. a source of help and advice and encouragement; "he played uncle to lonely students"

Wikipedia
Uncle (disambiguation)

An uncle is a family relative.

Uncle may also refer to:

  • Uncle (book series), by J. P. Martin
  • Uncle (TV series), a BBC Three sitcom starring Nick Helm
  • U.N.C.L.E., a fictional organization in the TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
  • The Uncle, a 1965 British drama film
  • "Uncle", a song by Mindless Self Indulgence on the album If
Uncle (novel)

Uncle (1964) is a children's novel written by J. P. Martin, the first book of six forming the Uncle series. It is named after the main character, a rich philanthropic elephant who lives in a huge fantastical castle populated by many other eccentric animals and people. It was illustrated, like the others in the series, by Quentin Blake.

Uncle (TV series)

Uncle is a British sitcom written and directed by Oliver Refson & Lilah Vandenburgh. A pilot episode was first broadcast on Channel 4 in December 2012, before the show was commissioned by BBC Three. The first episode from the series, a remake of the pilot, aired on 13 January 2014. Uncle stars Nick Helm, Daisy Haggard, Elliot Speller-Gillott and Sydney Rae White. The show was renewed for a second series, which began on BBC Three on 10 February 2015. In December 2015 it was announced that the programme would return for a third series in 2016.

Uncle

Uncle (from "little grandfather", the diminutive of avus "grandfather") is a male family relationship or kinship within an extended or immediate family. An uncle is the brother, brother-in-law or half-brother of one's parent. A biological uncle is a second degree male relative and shares 25% genetic overlap.

A woman with the equivalent relationship of an uncle is an aunt. The reciprocal relationship to both of these is that of a nephew or niece.

A great-uncle (sometimes written as great uncle, grand-uncle or granduncle) is the brother or brother-in-law of one's grandparent.

A great-granduncle is the brother or brother-in-law of one's great-grandparent.

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "uncle".

Kidd and throwed Uncle Esau face down acrost the saddle-bow, and headed for the hills.

Brownpony could only heap more ecclesiastical sanctions upon an already excommunicated and anathematized Filpeo Harq Hannegan and his uncle, the apostle of Platonic friendship and other deviations from orthodoxy.

Uncle Sam was called to fight for humanity, and only an approximation of the condition can be made, for about two-thirds of the National Guard had been taken into the regular service incident to the trouble with Mexico, when the Guardsmen were summoned to the border to protect the country, and recruiting was proceeding in all branches of the service to bring all the regiments up to a war footing.

The bankrupt gathered courage as he felt the indulgences shown to him, and he got into the coach with his uncle and Ragon.

Grace Bartram saw all three persons as she tiptoed into the room, but the only one to command her direct attention was her uncle.

Your Uncle Charles has already, for some months now, made a practice of swallowing three teaspoons of fish-liver oil just before he hurls the administrative skeleton bedward for the night.

But I myself bespoke the Vispi, imparting to them certain homely secrets that only members of the royal family know, and at last Uncle Palundo was convinced.

On his death without any male issue, the vacant throne was disputed by his uncles and cousins, and the popes most dexterously seized the occasion of judging the claims and merits of the candidates, and of bestowing on the most obsequious, or most liberal, the Imperial office of advocate of the Roman church.

And just as if he was performing in the circus, Bounder had gone down on his front legs as she swept off her hat in a graceful arc and bowed to her uncle.

She caught Gimme and Bounder, who had found his way back to the homestead after a week in the open, and was saddling them when she saw her uncle approaching.

She steered Bounder toward the house, where her uncle waited on the veranda.

Not too clear, thank heavens, for Jean-Marie Bourreau had brown hair and a more rugged build, but he reminded Tris a little of the face he saw in the mirror every day, and rather more of his uncle.

In conducting this work, Uncle Lance was the leader, and with the white element already enumerated, there were twelve to fifteen vaqueros included in the branding outfit.

David Silver was a plump young man with a pink scrubbed complexion, gold-rimmed pince-nez and his hair glossy with brilliantine and parted down the centre so that his scalp gleamed in the division like the scar of a sword cut He deferred courteously to his Uncle Aaron, and went to pains to make certain that both his guests were comfortable, that their chairs were arranged with the light from the windows falling from behind and that each of them had an ashtray beside him and a cup of tea in his hand.

Jehanne Greye Bulleyn Highclere regarded her uncle and guardian with a steady blue gaze.