disharmonic

adj — 2 senses

disharmonic

adj

UK /dɪshɑːˈmɒnɪk/

Etymology From dis- + harmonic.

1

Not harmonic.

2

Of or relating to a generation that is an odd number of generations distant from a particular person.

Australianist linguistics

  • 1979, Barry J. Blake & R. M. W. Dixon, The Handbook of Australian Languages A person is 'harmonic' with respect to his own generation and all even-numbered generations counting away from his own, and 'disharmonic' with respect to odd-numbered generations. Thus a man is disharmonic with respect to his father and his son but harmonic with respect to his grandfather and his grandson.
  • 1995, Alan Dench, Martuthunira: A Language of the Pilbara Region of Western Australia […] there is also a special set of (non-singular first person) pronoun forms for use with disharmonic kin: those in the opposite generation set. […] The two disharmonic pronouns are used as polite forms when the addressee and speaker are in different alternate generation sets.

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.