BROTHER, a term of relation between male children, sprung from the same parents, or from the same father, or the same mother.
The ancients used the term brother, indifferently, to almost all who stood related in the collateral line, as uncles and nephews, cousins-german, &c.
According to the laws of Moses, the brother of a man, who died without children, was obliged to marry the widow of the deceased, in order to raise up children to him, that his name and memory might not be extinct. See the article WIDOW.
Among us, it is customary for kings to give the title brother to each other.
In the civil law, brothers, fratres, in the plural number, sometimes comprehends sisters.