FRATERNAL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does fraternal mean? 

• FRATERNAL (adjective)
  The adjective FRATERNAL has 3 senses:

1. of or relating to a fraternity or society of usually men

2. (of twins) derived from two separate fertilized ova

3. like or characteristic of or befitting a brother

  Familiarity information: FRATERNAL used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FRATERNAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Of or relating to a fraternity or society of usually men

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Context example:

a fraternal order

Pertainym:

brotherhood (people engaged in a particular occupation)

Derivation:

fraternity (a social club for male undergraduates)

Sense 2

Meaning:

(of twins) derived from two separate fertilized ova

Synonyms:

biovular; fraternal

Context example:

fraternal twins are biovular

Antonym:

identical ((of twins) derived from a single egg or ovum)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Like or characteristic of or befitting a brother

Synonyms:

brotherlike; brotherly; fraternal

Context example:

close fraternal ties

 Context examples 

Captain Wentworth was come to Kellynch as to a home, to stay as long as he liked, being as thoroughly the object of the Admiral's fraternal kindness as of his wife's.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

She sat and cried con amore as her uncle intended, but it was con amore fraternal and no other.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

On his two younger sisters he then bestowed an equal portion of his fraternal tenderness, for he asked each of them how they did, and observed that they both looked very ugly.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

You think so now, rejoined St. John, because you do not know what it is to possess, nor consequently to enjoy wealth: you cannot form a notion of the importance twenty thousand pounds would give you; of the place it would enable you to take in society; of the prospects it would open to you: you cannot—"And you," I interrupted, cannot at all imagine the craving I have for fraternal and sisterly love.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Fraternal love, sometimes almost everything, is at others worse than nothing.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

An advantage this, a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I wondered if the fact that he was not drinking helped to set him off from his guests, for it seemed to me that he grew more correct as the fraternal hilarity increased.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)