nephew

The word "nephew" entered English in the 14th century from Old French neveu, which itself descended from Latin nepōs (meaning grandson, descendant, or nephew). The Latin term traces back to the Proto-Indo-European root nepōt-, which carried the core meaning of "grandson" or "male descendant not of the first generation." This semantic breadth explains the historical shift; in Roman and later European kinship systems, the same term could often apply to both grandsons and nephews. Over time, as kinship terminology became more specific in English, "nephew" specialized to its current meaning, while the original "grandson" sense was lost. The phonetic journey from Latin nepōt- to French neveu involved the loss of the final -t and a characteristic vowel shift, which was then adopted into Middle English.

The word is a simplex loanword from French. It does not contain separable, meaningful morphemes within its modern English spelling.