Mike, Paul Kay has presented a fun (and challenging) academic discussion of the following "superficial morphemes" used in kinship semantics: (1) great and grand; (2) -in-law; (3) by marriage; and (4) once removed, twice removed, etc. as applied to cousin. See Paul Kay, "Constants and Variables of English Kinship Semantics," Studies in Language Variation: Semantics, Syntax, Phonology, Pragmatics, Social Situations, Ethnographic Approaches; Papers from the Third Annual Colloquium on New Ways of Analyzing Variation, held at Georgetown University in Oct. 1974, edited by Ralph W. Fasold & Roger W. Shuy (1977), pp. 297 & 298. You should be able to find much of the discussion through Google Book at http://books.google.com/books?id=5-LBJb-77hcC&pg=PA298&lpg=PA298&dq=%2Busage+%2B%22grand+uncle%22&source=web&ots=wBWfoB3vQi&sig=4W4jH6xQYJDsN8H99AKe6hbvTMk&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result#PPA297,M1. Shay even presents equations! He also uses the form, "NUNCLE," in his report apparently in part to capture the several different ways the superficial morphemes "great" and "grand" are used (properly) to describe relationships involving aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews at different generational levels. Shay notes that the core of "English kinship semantics" has remained stable "over centuries and across continents." It's only that "certain bound morphemes [like 'great' and 'grand'] ... combine with the basic terms [like 'parent' and 'uncle'] ... to produce morphologically complex kinterms." That should clear up things! :-) Dave K