means The son of one's brother or sister, or of one's brother-in-law or sister-in-law.

from From Old French neveu, descended from Latin nepos, which originally meant 'grandson' or 'descendant' before narrowing to 'nephew.' It belongs to an ancient family of kinship words reaching back to Proto-Indo-European *nepot-, a cousin of Sanskrit napat 'descendant' and the source of words like 'nepotism' — the practice of popes and princes favoring their 'nephews,' a polite cover that sometimes meant their illegitimate sons.