relativenoun [ C ]
uk/ˈrel.ə.tɪv/us/ˈrel.ə.t̬ɪv/B1 a member of your family:
I don't have many blood relatives (= people related to me by birth rather than by marriage).
All her close/distant relatives came to the wedding.
More examples
- The children are being cared for by a relative.
- There weren't many people at the funeral - just close family relatives.
- I live in Cambridge, but my relatives live up north in Manchester.
- It is women who mainly shoulder responsibility for the care of elderly and disabled relatives.
- Sundry distant relatives, most of whom I hardly recognized, turned up for my brother's wedding.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Family: relations in general
- aunt
- auntie
- baby daddy
- be sb's own flesh and blood idiom
- birth mother
- fatherhood
- filial
- first cousin
- fraternal
- fraternal twin
- long-lost
- loved one
- maiden aunt
- maternal
- matriarch
- son
- uncle
- working mother/father/parent
- your nearest and dearest idiom
- your own flesh and blood idiom
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relativeadjective
uk/ˈrel.ə.tɪv/us/ˈrel.ə.t̬ɪv/formalrelative adjective (COMPARING)
C1 being judged or measured in comparison with something else:
We weighed up the relative advantages of driving there or going by train.
true to a particular degree when compared with other things:
Since I got a job, I've been living in relative comfort (= more comfort than before).
More examples
- The relative cheapness of foreign travel means that more people are going abroad than ever before.
- We've lived here for 15 years, but we're relative newcomers to the village.
- Now that the civil war is over, relative normality has returned to the south of the country.
- He rose from relative obscurity to worldwide recognition.
- There is a chart on the classroom wall showing the relative heights of all the children.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Comparing and contrasting
- against
- analogy
- antithesis
- as against idiom
- balance
- balance sth against sth
- benchmark
- compare
- comparison
- competitive
- contrast
- contrastive
- gold standard
- perspective
- relatively
- set
- simile
- stack up
- vis-à-vis
- work-life balance
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relative adjective (CONNECTED)
relative to
C2 If something is relative to something else, it changes according to the speed or level of the other thing:
The amount of petrol a car uses is relative to its speed.
If something is relative to a particular subject, it is connected with it:
Are these documents relative to the discussion?
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Linking and relating
- affiliated
- AL
- appertain to sth
- applicable
- apply
- associate
- associated
- bond
- connection
- context
- interconnected
- interplay
- interrelate
- interrelationship
- kindred
- the same/that goes for sb/sth idiom
- tie (sth) in
- tie-in
- tie-up
- topology
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