a. [f. L. frātern-us (f. frāter brother) + -AL. Cf. F. fraternel.] Of or pertaining to brothers or a brother; characteristic of a brother, brotherly.
1494. Fabyan, Chron., V. cxvi. 90. His vncle Chilperich bare towarde the sayd Guthranus not very fraternall loue.
1526. Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W., 1531), 170. Ye prayer that fraternall charite or brotherly loue commendeth before god.
1656. Cowley, Pindar. Odes, Olympique Ode, v.
| And those kind pious glories do deface | |
| The old fraternal Quarrel of thy Race. |
1738. Glover, Leonidas, I. 246.
| Forget not her, who not for thee laments | |
| In sorrows, which fraternal love in vain | |
| Hath strove to sooth. |
1850. Kingsley, Alt. Locke, xxxix. And I have succeeded—as others will succeed, long after my name, my small endeavours, are forgotten amid the great new world—new Church I should have said—of enfranchised and fraternal labour.
1874. L. Stephen, Hours in Library (1892), II. i. 8. More than one modern writer has expressed a fraternal affection for Addison, and it is justified by the kindly humour which breathes through his ‘Essays.’
Hence Fraternally adv., in a fraternal manner.
1611. Cotgr., Fraternellement, fraternally, brotherly.
1727. in Bailey, vol. II.
1812. Examiner, 4 May, 284/2. The logic of Shakspeare was frequently as potent as his fancy; so fraternally gigantick were his imagination and his intellect.
1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, xii. 412. Children of the earth, and conscious of their own recent birth from the bosom of the divine in nature, they [the Greeks] loved all fair and fresh things of the open world fraternally.
1882. Sir R. Temple, Men & Women of My Time, ii. 19–20. The sitting Director, Colonel William Henry Sykes, then distinguished by his statistical researches, entreated us with much earnestness to think kindly, even fraternally, regarding the Natives of India, adding an assurance that, if inferior to us in moral robustness of character, they would prove to be intellectually our equals.
