sister-in-law
Americannoun
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sisters-in-law
plural
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the sister of one's spouse.
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the wife of one's brother or sister.
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the wife of one's spouse's sister or brother.
noun
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the sister of one's husband or wife
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the wife of one's brother
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of sister-in-law
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English syster in lawe; see origin at sister, in, law 1; from Middle English in-lawe “in law,” i.e., “a person within the regulation and protection of the law,” based on the prohibition by Roman civil law and, later, Christian canon law, of marriages within four degrees of consanguinity, i.e., up to and including first cousins
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.
See Examples For:
Six of Tamang's relatives - his mother, elder brother and sister-in-law and three of their children - are gone, he said.
From BBC ● Sep. 1, 2026
For instance, Mr. Nichols tells us early on that Hawthorne’s sister-in-law, Elizabeth Peabody, coined the word “transcendentalism.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
Your sister-in-law may just be a bit flaky.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 7, 2026
I’ve become really close with my sister-in-law, and almost every Sunday, we meet for what we call “tea time.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 7, 2026
She went up to her sister-in-law, gently removed the wig, and saw that she was nearly bald: aged and helpless.
From "The House of the Spirits: A Novel" by Isabel Allende
She exchanged postcards with former sisters-in-law and her first husband’s second wife.
From Salon ● Feb. 9, 2025
"My father, my brother, my sisters-in-law and my friends are gone," says Delfino.
From BBC ● Feb. 7, 2025
Still, she and her husband and brothers- and sisters-in-law believed that God had a plan for them, even now, she said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2023
Moreno's wife, one of their daughters, two of his brothers and two sisters-in-law are also among those allegedly connected to the case, Salazar said.
From Reuters ● Feb. 22, 2023
Patti starts pointing out faces and naming my father's cousins and their sisters and sisters-in-law and brothers and brothers-in-law.
From "Born Behind Bars" by Padma Venkatraman
Definitions 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.
