fraternal
Americanadjective
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of or befitting a brother or brothers; brotherly.
-
of or being a society of men associated in brotherly union, as for mutual aid or benefit.
a fraternal order; a fraternal association.
adjective
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of or suitable to a brother; brotherly
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of or relating to a fraternity
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designating either or both of a pair of twins of the same or opposite sex that developed from two separate fertilized ova Compare identical
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of fraternal
1375–1425; late Middle English < Latin frātern ( us ) fraternal (derivative of frāter brother ) + -al 1
Compare meaning
How does fraternal compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
Use the adjective fraternal to mean "brotherly," the way you'd describe your fraternal relationship with your oldest friend who is like a brother to you. A fight between brothers? You could chalk it up to fraternal rivalry. Fraternal describes the relationship between brothers, but it is also used is to describe a club, society or fraternity, some brotherly group of people — usually men — with common interests. Fraternal twins, unlike identical twins, are formed from separate ova. That's why they don't look exactly alike and can be a girl and a boy, instead of two girls or two boys.
Vocabulary lists containing fraternal
Lincoln Inaugural Address (March 1861)
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Vocabulary from Vladimir Putin's Speech on Crimea
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Max in the House of Spies
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The palace issued a rebuttal to the book: “The pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and color memory in ways others do not recognize, even many years after such a loss.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
"It's not every day you get gaslit by the King," is the headline of the Mail on Sunday after Buckingham Palace released a statement saying that fraternal grief could "colour memory".
From BBC ● Sep. 20, 2026
"The Moon and Earth are more like fraternal twins."
From Science Daily ● Sep. 11, 2026
Even more rare is the kind of triplets Craft gave birth to, Passi said: Two of them are identical twins and the third is a fraternal twin.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 31, 2026
If identical twins possess a strong concordance for schizophrenia, say, while fraternal twins—born and bred in an identical environment—show little concordance, then the roots of that illness can be firmly attributed to genetics.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
