"daughter-not-in-law"

[George Thompson]

I sometimes refer to my daughter's live-in boyfriend of these last 10
years as my de facto son-in-law (as opposed to de jure).

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Date: Wednesday, January 5, 2005 2:19 pm
Subject: Re: "daughter-not-in-law"

> At 4:55 PM +0000 1/5/05, neil wrote:
> >on 5/1/05 4:52 pm, Thomas Paikeday at thomaspaikeday at SPRINT.CA wrote:
> >
> >>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >>  -----------------------
> >>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >>  Poster:       Thomas Paikeday <thomaspaikeday at SPRINT.CA>
> >>  Subject:      "daughter-not-in-law"
> >>
> >------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------
> >--> -
> >>
> >>  Is the above word current enough to be used in print without =
> >>  explanation? I saw it on the "Facts & Arguments" page in this
> morning's =
> >>  Globe & Mail ("Canada's national newspaper"). I e-mailed
> Michael =
> >>  Kesterton who edits the page and he cops out saying it is a joke.
> >>
> >>  I naturally Googled it first and there is one occurrence where
> it is =
> >>  used and explained within brackets as "son's girl friend."
> >>
> >>  A very useful word, I think.
> >>
> >>  TOM PAIKEDAY
> >>  www.paikeday.net
> >
> >Shouldn't that be 'daughter in law - not!'
> >Neil Crawford
> >neil at typog.co.uk
>
> For ages, I've heard the term "out-law", which does strike me as more
> elegant than "not-in-law", but almost always applied collectively
> ("my out-laws").
>
> Also, I'd think either an out-law or a not-in-law would be more than
> a boy/girlfriend simpliciter, entailing living-with or a longterm,
> stable, committed (whatever) relationship.
>
> L
>