Stepdaughter

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A female child of a spouse that originates from a former partnership, without direct blood relation to the current partner
2. The daughter of a partner arising from a previous marriage or relationship, lacking biological connection
3. A girl who is the child of a spouse but not biologically related to the individual ;

Etymology: The "step" in stepdaughter is not about stepping at all. It comes from Old English "stēop-", which meant "bereaved" or "orphaned", and the same root survives in "stepmother", "stepson" and "stepchild". A stepdaughter, in other words, was originally a daughter left without a parent, and the word tied her to the loss that had reshaped her family rather than to the new adult who joined it. The compound is old and transparent: "step-" attached to "daughter", which in Old English was "dohtor". The Old English form "stēopdohtor" passed into Middle English as "stepdoughter" and "stepdoghter", the spellings shifting as the pronunciation of the vowels did. The word's ancestry reaches back to Proto-Germanic, and its cousins survive across the Germanic languages, from Dutch "stiefdochter" and German "Stieftochter" to Swedish "styvdotter" and Icelandic "stjúpdóttir".

Synonyms: daughter-in-law, bonus daughter, child of spouse, adopted daughter, non-biological daughter

Antonyms: biological daughter, son, child, offspring, heir