incest
/ˈɪn.sɛst/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.36 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Sexual relations between close relatives, especially immediate family members and sometimes first cousins, usually considered taboo.
Uncountable
verb
Example Sentences
- "Genetic problems caused by incest are thought to have plagued many royal families in the Middle Ages."
- "For a structuralist like Edmund Leach, the structure is the meaning. Genesis, for example, is about incest taboos; all the rest is noise and mystification."
- "He was only Craster's whelp, an abomination born of incest, not the son of the King-beyond-the-Wall."
- "I do not want anyone to feel that my lesbianism is a result of being incested."
- "Her erotic transference ultimately devolved into a revelation that she had been consistently incested by her brother"
- "[…] the most powerful of that bunch of immortal giants called Titans was Cronus, who “incested” with sister Rhea, who then birthed the Olympians (Zeus and his bunch) […]"
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin incestus. Displaced Old English mǣġhǣmed (literally “relative-sex”). Doublet of inchaste.