word choice - My family vs. my family


Is there any lingual way to differentiate between the family that I’m a child of and the family that I am a parent of? (I.e., the first family consists of my parents, my siblings, and me; the second one consists of my spouse, my children and me.)



Answer



@JAM is right about 'family of origin.' (It does not mean one's 'original family', as contrasted with one's 'new' family.) It does have a clinical feel, though.


"Me and my brood" is a slangy way to refer exclusively to the second group: you and your spouse and children. It's interesting that the spouse is implicitly included (a quick google search will verify this.


From a lexical standpoint, I can't think of anything else.


From a pragmatic standpoint, I would usually go for adverbial or metaphorical expressions in the kinds of cases when the constrasting expressions you are looking for seem necessary. For example, "Under my parent's roof, a kid couldn't sleep over on weekends; under our roof, the kids won't stay at home on weeknights."


Finally, I think you used the word 'lingual' when you mean 'lexical'.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

time - English notation for hour, minutes and seconds

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

word choice - Which is the correct spelling: “fairy” or “faerie”?