Learn English – Can the eldest sibling of three males call his younger brother “the older brother”

meaningword-choice

Had this conversation with a 26 year old male. He has finished a degree at Uni and told me I was wrong when I said you cannot call your younger brother your older brother. He is only older son to your mother who would refer to her three sons as "my youngest son, my older/elder son and my oldest/eldest son. He was so passionate about this (my three sons also told me I was wrong) I had to stop but at 47 I am wondering what is correct.

Best Answer

To take it from from a linguistic boffin's standpoint, I guess that "older" is a deictic word: its meaning varies depending on usage. There's a handy illustration at Wikipedia's page for deixis. When you say "my older brother" you put yourself in the deictic centre. Your listener then should figure out the position of your brother relative to that centre.

As WS2 rightfully pointed out, you may with a degree of certainty say "he's my older brother" to an acquaintance who knows that you're the oldest of the flock, but not to just any John Doe.

That's because deictic words require contextual information to be fully understood, and your acquaintance will know that while you're at the deictic centre there's no way for you brother to be at the.. er.. deictic "above", because there's a.. hm.. "deictic ceiling" of the fact of your being the oldest.

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