Other forms: aunts
An aunt is the sister of your mother or father. My aunt, Aunt Mary, a favourite aunt.
The word covers an uncle's wife too, and in many families any close family friend of the older generation. English has one word where many languages have four, distinguishing mother's side from father's and blood from marriage. Auntie is the affectionate form, and the Auntie is a long-standing nickname for the BBC. Note that the pronunciation splits sharply between British and American English.
1nounauntThe sister of your mother or father, or an uncle's wife.
“We stayed with my aunt and uncle on their farm for the summer holidays.”
aunt is a relative.
Also accepted in games: auntie
Old French ante comes from Latin amita, a father's sister. It displaced Old English modrige, which was specifically the mother's sister, and English lost the distinction in the trade.
Latin
amita — father's sister
Old French
ante
Anglo-Norman
aunte
Middle English
aunte
English, today
aunt
From Middle English aunte, from Anglo-Norman aunte, from Old French ante, from Latin amita (“father's sister”). Displaced native Middle English modrie (“aunt”) (from Old English mōdriġe (“maternal aunt”); compare Old English (“paternal aunt”)). 2 The digraph au representing (rather than) is irregular. It likely reflects a development of Middle English to before in some varieties of Early Modern English, which later came to be identified with either or from pre-fricative lengthening (in the latter case, creating a phoneme; this is the basis of the bath lexical set). Such pronunciations historically competed with more learned ones where underwent its normal development to, with the standard language eventually adopting in words that came to be spelt with a and in those which came to be spelt with au except in this word. However, dialects may have or in other words such as launch, especially in the UK.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA