Affine

Definitions

1. Fine-tune.
2. A relative by marriage.

Equivalents

Examples

“1970 [Routledge and Kegan Paul], Raymond Firth, Jane Hubert, Anthony Forge, Families and Their Relatives: Kinship in a Middle-Class Sector of London, 2006, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), page 135, The element of personal idiosyncracy may be expected to be most marked in regard to affines (i.e. those related by marriage) and particularly with the consanguines of affines, who are linked by still more tenuous bonds. There are many possible degrees of affinal relationship here, but broadly affines separate⟳ into two main types: spouse of consanguine of Ego, and consanguine of spouse of Ego—exemplified by my brother's wife, and my wife's brother.”

“In contrast to bonds of kaḅisu membership, which require⟳ ritual maintenance and can produce⟳ intense factional rivalries, and those of affines, which demand⟳ ongoing exchanges, unmediated relations of blood are created by nothing more than physical procreation.[…]People's ability to swivel between these two rhetorical possibilities reflects the inherent tension that lies between affines, who are both others and extensions of oneself.”

“For the Cubeo the Vekürüwá and Okómiwa were, as they say⟳, designated to be their affines, in a manner that was calculated to emphasize their similarities rather than the formal differences that set⟳ contemporary intermarriages apart. I suspect⟳ that Cubeo themselves sense⟳ that an excessive intimacy with the contingent of affines may have⟳ been suitable for a formative period of still ambiguous distinctions, but not for the real social world.”

CEFR level