Word.ws English Dictionary

levir

levir noun: a husband's brother.

Noun

levir (plural levirs)

  1. A husband's brother.
    • The tie between the childless widow and the levir exists automatically from the moment of widowhood. Thus a sexual relationship with anyone other than the levir would be adulterous, an offense punishable by the death penalty, according to Lev. 20:10 and Deut. 22:22.2001, David L. Lieber, Jules Harlow, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, page 236
    • Levirate marriage protects a levir's sexual property and a dead man's entitlement. The former, however, serves the latter.2008, Deborah L. Ellens, Women in the Sex Texts of Leviticus and Deuteronomy: A Comparative Conceptual Analysis, Bloomsbury, →ISBN, page 261

Forms of levir

plurallevirs

Origin of levir

Borrowed from Late Latin lēvir.

Questions about levir

What does levir mean?
Levir means a husband's brother.
What part of speech is levir?
Levir is a noun.
What is the plural of levir?
The plural of levir is levirs.

Words near levir in the dictionary

  1. Levinson
  2. levinsonite
  3. Levinsons
  4. Levinthal's paradox
  5. Levinton
  6. levir
  7. levirate
  8. levirate marriage
  9. levirate marriages
  10. levirates
  11. leviratic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: levir (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “levir.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/levir. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.