auntie
See also: Auntie
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
Pronunciation edit
- (UK) IPA(key): /ˈæn.ti/, /ˈɑːn.ti/
- (Ghana) IPA(key): /ˈɐn.ti/
Audio (Southern England) (file) - Rhymes: -ɑːnti, -ænti
- Homophones: ante, any, anti (in some accents)
Noun edit
auntie (plural aunties)
- Diminutive of aunt
- (Asia, Africa) Term of familiarity or respect for a middle-aged or elderly woman.
- (Hong Kong) female domestic helper
- (LGBT, slang, US) An elderly gay man.[1]
Usage notes edit
- In some lects this is the most common spoken form for aunt.
- In some regions, the spelling aunty is more common.
Synonyms edit
Derived terms edit
Descendants edit
Translations edit
Diminutive of aunt
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See also edit
Verb edit
auntie (third-person singular simple present aunties, present participle auntying, simple past and past participle auntied)
- To be or behave like the aunt of.
- 1994, Maria Guadalupe Serna-Perez, Entrepreneurship, Women's Roles, and the Domestic Cycle:
- In the same melodrama, Madame Rotschild, a supporting character plays a similar role by "auntying" all children as a rich and powerful woman who can solve most problems in children's own homes.
- 2003, Richard M. Lerner, Handbook of applied developmental science:
- More and more children are being "auntied" by women in the community who feel it is their duty as mothers to care for parentless children.
- 2011, Salvatore Scibona, The End, page 72:
- She had had only one unmitigated success in bending the girl to her will over the many years she'd auntied her: She had peeled the dialect right olf Lina's tongue.
- 2019, Keturah Kendrick, No Thanks: Black, Female, and Living in the Martyr-Free Zone:
- “I am the best auntie of any auntie that has ever auntied,” she'd say, and in doing so reshape herself into the image her community needed to see.
References edit
- ^ A. F. Niemoeller, "A Glossary of Homosexual Slang," Fact 2, no. 1 (Jan-Feb 1965): 25