Other forms: relatives
A relative is somebody in your family — an aunt, a cousin, a grandmother, the second cousin you only see at funerals. When a form asks for your next of kin, it is asking for a relative.
The adjective is the word's other half, and it means measured against something else rather than on its own: relative poverty, relative humidity, the relative safety of the harbour after the open sea. Out of it comes relatively, where relatively cheap means cheap compared with the rest, not cheap. Grammar borrows the word too — who, which and that are relative pronouns, and the clause they open is a relative clause. Mind the near neighbour: a relation is also a family member, but relations in the plural means dealings between people or countries. Relatives came to dinner; relations broke down.
1nounrelativeA member of your family, by blood or by marriage.
“Most of her relatives still live within an hour of the town.”
synonyms: relation, kin
2adjectivejudgedJudged in comparison with something else rather than on its own.
“The relative cost of the two roofs decided it in the end.”
3adjectivegrammarIn grammar, introducing a clause that describes an earlier noun.
“In "the man who called", who is a relative pronoun.”
relative is a family member.
Also accepted in games: relation
Relative came through Middle French relatif from Latin relātīvus, built on referō, to carry back — re-, again, plus ferō, to bear or carry. So a relative is something carried back to something else and measured against it, which is precisely what the adjective still does. The family sense is that same idea softened: the people you are connected back to.
Proto-Indo-European
*telh₂- (bear)
Latin
relātīvus
Middle French
relatif
English, today
relative
Built from
From Middle French relatif, from Latin relātīvus, from Latin relātus, perfect passive participle of referō (“to carry back, to ascribe”), from re- (“again”) + ferō (“to bear or carry”). by surface analysis, relate + -ive.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA