non-relative
non-relative — noun
1. a person who does not belong to your family by blood or marriage, often mentione
a person who does not belong to your family by blood or marriage, often mentioned in legal, medical, or housing contexts where the distinction matters.
Otis named his neighbour Diego as a non-relative he wanted to visit him in the hospital.
noun in object position; named NP of [headword]
The landlord asked whether the woman moving in was a relative or a non-relative.
contrastive pairing with 'relative'
Tanvi left a small share of her savings to a non-relative who had cared for her late mother.
Hospital policy lets one non-relative stay overnight if the patient gives written consent.
Élise lives with two non-relatives in a shared flat near the university.
- outsider
broader; emphasises being outside any group, not specifically a family
- unrelated person
everyday paraphrase; less bureaucratic than 'non-relative'
- third party
legal register; someone outside a specified relationship, not always about family
文法句型
a non-relative of [person]
用法筆記
Almost always appears in institutional or legal contexts (hospitals, immigration, inheritance, housing) where rules treat family members differently from outsiders. In ordinary speech people prefer 'friend', 'stranger', or 'someone outside the family'.
常見錯誤
non-relative — adjective
1. describing a quality, value, or measurement that stands on its own and is not wo
describing a quality, value, or measurement that stands on its own and is not worked out by comparing it with something else.
In her lecture, Professor Naoko said human dignity has a non-relative value across every culture.
academic lecture context; attributive use before 'value'
The engineer tested the bridge using non-relative units that hold true in any reference frame.
engineering / measurement context
The judges marked each painting on a non-relative scale, ignoring how the other entries had scored.
Ziad argued in class that some moral truths are non-relative and apply in every country.
- absolute
everyday word; the same idea but used in normal writing, not just academic
- fixed
informal; suggests unchanging, not specifically free of comparison
- context-independent
academic; emphasises that the value holds regardless of surrounding conditions
- relative
direct opposite — measured or judged in comparison with something else
- comparative
specifically about side-by-side comparison
文法句型
non-relative + noun
用法筆記
Attributive only — sits before a noun ('a non-relative scale') and rarely after 'be'. Common in philosophy, ethics, and the sciences as the opposite of 'relative'; in everyday writing, 'absolute' is the much more frequent word for the same idea.