[General] My lovely in law

[Andreas Tuela]

I asking about meaning of my lovely in law??

 

[emsr2d2]

I want [strike]asking[/strike] to ask about the meaning of "my lovely in law". [strike]??[/strike]

Welcome to the forum. :hi:

Where did you find this strange phrase? Please give us the context and the complete sentence in which you saw it.

Note my corrections above, marked in red.

 

[Tdol]

It could be my lovely in-law, which would mean someone you are related to by marriage. In-laws would be the plural.

 

[denismurs]

NOT A TEACHER.

Probably the frase "my lovely in law" speaks about a person with who somebody lives but is not married or has any kind of ties of relationship. I think here could be missed a noun, for example:

"My lovely woman-in-law invited me to watch a movie yesterday."
"My lovely brother-in-law gets a new business contract."

 

[BobK]

I thought for a moment that the non-existent *'woman-in-law' was due to some languages' use of 'woman' to mean 'wife'. But *'wife-in-law' doesn't exist either; in fact, far from existing, it makes no sense at all (except if a man bigamously married a woman who was already married to another woman - fairly improbable, I think). ;-)

b

 

[SoothingDave]

We have such a thing as "common law marriage," so I suppose one could be a "common law wife."

 

[denismurs]

We have such a thing as "common law marriage," so I suppose one could be a "common law wife."

Yes, it does exist. http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Common-law+wife

 

[BobK]

Yes, it does exist. http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Common-law+wife

This does not justify *wife-in-law in any sense. The notion of ‘common law‘ has no connection at all with the form ‘X-in-law‘. In this form, X can only be an immediate blood relative - as Piscean said some time ago. ;-)

b

 

[MikeNewYork]

An in-law is not a blood relative of the person in question; they are related only by marriage.

 

[Tdol]

This does not justify *wife-in-law in any sense. The notion of ‘common law‘ has no connection at all with the form ‘X-in-law‘. In this form, X can only be an immediate blood relative - as Piscean said some time ago.

And if you put it into the cinema sentence, it doesn't work as it's a legal term:

"My lovely common-law wife invited me to watch a movie yesterday." (Weird and unnatural)
"My lovely partner invited me to watch a movie yesterday." :tick: