Other forms: stepbrothers
A stepbrother is the son your parent's new partner brought with them. My stepbrother, two stepbrothers, his stepbrother's house.
He shares no parent with you, which is the difference from a half-brother, who shares one. The step- prefix comes from an Old English word about bereavement, because these relationships once followed a death rather than a divorce.
1nounstepbrotherThe son of a parent's new partner.
“When my mum remarried, I got a stepbrother who was a year older than me.”
stepbrother is a family relation.
Middle English
steppen
English
step
English, today
stepbrother
Built from
From step- + brother. step comes from Middle English steppen. From Middle English steppen, from Old English steppan (“to step, go, proceed, advance”), stepe (“step”), from Proto-West Germanic stappjan, from Proto-Germanic stapjaną (“to step”), stapiz (“step”), from Proto-Indo-European stebʰ- (“to support, stomp, curse, be amazed”). Cognate with West Frisian stappe (“to step”), frr stape (“to walk, trudge”), Dutch stappen (“to step, walk”), wa steper (“to walk away, leave”), German stapfen (“to trudge, stomp, plod”) and further to Slavic Polish stąpać (“to stomp, stamp, step, tread”), Russian ступать and Polish stopień (“step, stair, rung, degree”), Russian степень. Related to stamp, stomp.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA