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You can shorten it up a bit: her aunt’s cousin is her cousin once removed.
by evincarofautumn 11y ago
You can shorten it up a bit: her aunt’s cousin is her cousin once removed.
- joslin01 11y agoHaha, yes because that reads easy. I'm all for being succinct, but the point is to get the message across in a light-hearted, simple manner by using one hop at a time. What you said wrote sounds scientific and cold.
- evincarofautumn 11y agoI always thought “once removed” sounded funny, because it’s rarely used in practice enough that I pretty much only hear it in gags about convoluted relationships.
- joslin01 11y agoYou think it sounds funny for a reason :) I think that it's an awkward pairing that needs context. You're immediately thinking "once removed from what?" and then scanning for what it is. This can be a burdensome way to end a sentence. Better to build up to something than to force the listener to look backwards and reconstruct IMO.
- evincarofautumn 11y agoI don’t know what you’re talking about. “Once/twice/thrice removed” means “removed by one/two/three generations”, where “removed” has the sense of “separated”. “From what?” is the wrong question.
- joslin01 11y agoI'm annoyed I didn't know that. I read it as once separated, and got the overall message, but was part of the reason I found it so funny to read. Now that I've built that association, I guess it's simpler. It's weird I'm a big talker and always reading things and never came across that in a way that I memorized it. I appreciate you explaining it to me.