kin
Race; family; breed; kind.
Adjective
- Related by blood or marriage, akin. (It is more common to form sentences using the noun instead.)
- It turns out my back-fence neighbor is kin to one of my co-workers.
- ... and our feeling together had made us forget what-ever there'd been between us to forget about. And I ain't ever in my life felt so kin to folks. I felt kinner than I knew I was. That night, tired as I was, I...
- How serenely Earth keeps on her business! […] Yielding powers to man's hand / While he burrows in her sand, / […] How kin is she to man, who sips / Nourishment with boasting lips, / Detached, but inalienably bound /To...
Origin
From Middle English kyn, from Old English cynn (“kind, sort, rank”), from Proto-West Germanic *kuni, from Proto-Germanic *kunją (“race, generation, descent”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵn̥h₁yom, from *ǵenh₁- (“to produce”). Cognate with Scots kin (“relatives, kinfolk”), North Frisian kinn, kenn (“gender, race, family, kinship”), Dutch kunne (“gender, sex”), Middle Low German kunne (“gender, sex, race, family, lineage”), Danish køn (“gender, sex”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk kjønn (“gender, sex”), Swedish kön (“gender, sex”), Faroese and Icelandic kyn (“gender”), Finnish kunnia (“honour, glory”), Ingrian kunnia (“reputation”), and through Indo-European, with Latin genus (“kind, sort, ancestry, birth”), Ancient Greek γένος (génos, “kind, race”), Sanskrit जनस् (jánas, “kind, race”), Albanian dhen (“(herd of) small cattle”).
Noun Entry 2
- Race; family; breed; kind.
- the starfish and its kin the sea urchin
- Persons of the same race or family; kindred.
- c. 1620, Francis Bacon, letter of advice to Sir George Villiers You are of kin, and so must be a friend to their persons.
- Based on the number of teeth ammonites had—nine—it's believed that their closest living kin are octopuses. - 2014, Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Picador, →ISBN, page 84:
- One or more relatives, such as siblings or cousins, taken collectively.
- Among those who derive information related to work from personal contacts, nonkins, rather than kins, constitute the most important sources even for women. - 2016, Saraswati Raju, Santosh Jatrana, Women Workers in Urban...
- Relationship; same-bloodedness or affinity; near connection or alliance, as of those having common descent.
- Such sensations, however, were too near a kin to resentment to be long guiding Fanny's soliloquies. - 1814 May 9, [Jane Austen], chapter XIII, in Mansfield Park: […], volume III, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas]...
Forms
Related
Derived
akin alkin erfkin fictive kin kind kindom kindred kinfolk king kinhood Kinism Kinist kinless kinly kinomics kin selection kinsfolk kinship kinslayer kinsman kinsperson kin state kinstate kinswoman
Noun lifestyle
- A fictional or non-fictional being whom one spiritually connects to.
- kin) Someone who identifies as a certain fictional character.
Related: kinnie
Origin
Clipping of fictionkin.
Forms
Noun alt of, alternative
- Alternative form of qin (“Chinese string instrument”).
- Originally they had only two cither-like instruments, which had flat sound-boxes without fingerboards, over which were strung rather a large number (25) of strings of twisted silk — the kin and tsche. - 1899, Hugo...
- If a musician were going to give a lecture upon the mathematical part of his art, he would find a very elegant substitute for the monochord in the Chinese kin. - 1840, Elijah Coleman Bridgman, Samuel Wells Williams, The...
Origin
Borrowed from Mandarin 琴 (qín), from a non-palatal dialect akin to Peking; or less likely, from Japanese 琴 (kin).
Forms
Noun alt of, alternative
- Alternative form of k'in.
Forms
Noun abbreviation, alt of
- Clipping of kinesiology.
Verb lifestyle
- To identify with; as in spiritually connect to a fictional or non-fictional being.
Forms
Verb alt of, pronunciation spelling
- Pronunciation spelling of can.
- [Owl:] Oh I ain't stealin' this dime... I just took it for safe-keepin'. [Turtle:] Ain't much you kin do with it—'cept make a phone call. - 1959 January 5, Walt Kelly, Pogo, comic strip, →ISBN, page 4: