Talk:grandniece

Meaning and commonness of various forms

Merriam-Webster defines this as "granddaughter of one's brother or sister", Dictionary.com as "a daughter of one's nephew or niece", which is the same thing. Collins defines it as "great-niece", which it defines the same way as MW and Dictionary.com define this term. This is indeed how we defined it, but we split it over two sense lines, unjustifiably. - -sche (discuss) 15:58, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Per ngrams (https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=greatniece%2B[great-niece]%2Cgrandniece%2B[grand-niece]%2Cgreatnephew%2B[great-nephew]%2Cgrandnephew%2B[grand-nephew]&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2C%28greatniece%20%2B%20[great%20-%20niece]%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28grandniece%20%2B%20[grand%20-%20niece]%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28greatnephew%20%2B%20[great%20-%20nephew]%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28grandnephew%20%2B%20[grand%20-%20nephew]%29%3B%2Cc0) the "grand" forms are more common than the "great-" ones when it comes to nieces and nephews. - -sche (discuss) 17:33, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

In contrast, with uncles and aunts, the "great" forms are more common than the "grand" ones (https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=greataunt%2B[great-aunt]%2Cgrandaunt%2B[grand-aunt]%2Cgreatuncle%2B[great-uncle]%2Cgranduncle%2B[grand-uncle]&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2C%28greataunt%20%2B%20[great%20-%20aunt]%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28grandaunt%20%2B%20[grand%20-%20aunt]%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28greatuncle%20%2B%20[great%20-%20uncle]%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28granduncle%20%2B%20[grand%20-%20uncle]%29%3B%2Cc0). - -sche (discuss) 17:37, 18 July 2015 (UTC)