auncle

noun

1. (rare)Used especially as a gender-neutral term: the sibling or sibling-in-law of one's parent.

   “By cross-cousin marriage, the parents-in-law are auncles (mother’s brother, father’s sister), but since we appear to have a Lukian term nere for parents-in-law but another, tuhe, for auncles, the Lukian relationship terms do not seem to be based upon a cross-cousin system.”

   “And if we are considering all logical possibilities (or anyway all that we can manage to think up), and then assigning equal initial a priori probabilities to each, then should we not divide those having siblings with a child into uncles, aunts, auncles′, auncles″, auncles‴,…, etc., ad infinitum, where we distinguish between the aunclesⁿ(‴…) in whatever way we care to imagine?”

   ““Do you think we might have more than one child?” he ventured. After all, she was the one who’d have to bear them. / “Yes, I think so. You know the way Mum and LeeLee are, and Kris and Alex. Maybe a bit closer together might be good though, so we don’t end up with auncles only a little bit older than nevvies.” / “What and which?” / “Auncles?” / “And neivies” / Her face cleared. “Oh—you don’t use those words. They’re like sibling or parent. Non-specific.””