half sister
16
1.1
- noun
- /hæf ˈsɪstər/
:
media hermana
- My half sister, Sarah, and I share the same mother but have different fathers.
Who is that half sister that didn't get any witchy powers?
- Who is that half sister that didn't get any witchy powers?
- How was the meeting with your half sister?
- And when I say he was abusive, he would smack around his girlfriend and my half sister who was from a different family, right?
- She was unmarried, but she and my half sister, she had never voted in her life and of course she had never owned any property.
- Then there's Catherine Cornelius, his half sister, the object of his his incestuous desire, who he's in love with his sister.
- So eventually she takes a kid and she goes to her half sister who's flat this was.
- I got half sister lives over there in Spanish Fort.
- So they were half sisters and it was their dad that, you know, our stepfather that did the abuse.
- That's what they call them me, the more paid boys at the V, He's allegedly got a daughter, got a daughter to his half sister.
Examples
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My father has a daughter from his first marriage, my older half-sister, Susie, who lives in New York City.
Fiction book (1999) -
Those are my half-sisters, and they're really great.
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Maybe I even have a half sister.
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Are we four sisters, half sisters or step sisters?
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I found Rajan, our half sister.
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I've got two half sisters and a half brother.
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- Oh, she's my half sister and also my guardian.
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Elizabeth lived under the rule of her father; then, her sickly half-brother, Edward; and later, her half-sister, Mary.
Fiction book (1999) -
Valerie and Fernanda, Jazz's half-sisters, had been a constant in her life throughout her earliest years.
Fiction book (1990) -
Nell's mother, my older half-sister Janet, is enrolled in a week-long screenwriting course team-taught by her current love interest.
Fiction book (1996)
Synonyms
19
2.3
A sister who shares one parent with you but not both parents
A person who shares only one parent with a brother or sister
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a sister who shares only one parent' is directly derivable from combining 'half' (indicating one of two parents shared) with 'sister' (female sibling). This kinship modifier pattern is cross-linguistically common and follows regular compositional rules, so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily understand the MWE.
Etymology
The noun half sister comes from the simple idea that half means sharing only one parent and sister means a female sibling. So a half sister is 'a sister who shares one parent but not both'.