In olden times giving birth was 2.5 times as dangerous as going into battle.Khemehekis wrote: ↑08 Mar 2015 05:49I should probably add "widower". Widowers will become nearly as common as widows as technology goes on.Lao Kou wrote:half-siblings? widower?
Come to think of it, I should probably add "orphan" too.
Half-siblings, I'm less sure about.
Widowers were quite common.
Re-marriage was also quite common.
A widower who was also a father would likely re-marry and have more children by the next wife.
Or a father with one living wife might also marry another wife and have children by her.
So agnate half-siblings were pretty common.
Or a widow who was also a mother might remarry and have more children by the second husband.
So enate or uterine half-siblings were pretty common too.
And a widower who was a father might marry a widow who was a mother. That happened in Cinderella, for instance. So step-siblings were also quite common.
I suppose a father whose first wife was still living with him, might marry a widowed mother; maybe because she was his brother’s widow, or because of something like what happened to the Mormons in the 19th century.
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Whether you want these relationships in the “core” vocabulary, may depend on something else than how common they are. But if there’s an obstacle, lack of commonness isn’t it.