kin
/kɪn/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.65 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Relationship; same-bloodedness or affinity; near connection or alliance, as of those having common descent.
Countable; Uncountable
adj
Related by blood or marriage, akin. (It is more common to form sentences using the noun instead.)
noun
Alternative form of qin (“Chinese string instrument”).
verb
To identify with; as in spiritually connect to a fictional or non-fictional being.
Slang; Transitive verb
Example Sentences
- "the starfish and its kin the sea urchin"
- "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."
- "Among those who derive information related to work from personal contacts, nonkins, rather than kins, constitute the most important sources even for women."
- "Such sensations, however, were too near a kin to resentment to be long guiding Fanny's soliloquies."
- "It turns out my back-fence neighbor is kin to one of my co-workers."
Etymology
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”).