kin
kin Lexical Profile
kin Game Scores & Validity
• noun
A person's family and relatives collectively.
"Hospital policy requires the staff to notify the patient's next of kin immediately in an emergency."
A group of people, organisms, or things sharing common origins, traits, or characteristics.
"Wolves and their wild kin play a vital role in maintaining the balance of northern ecosystems."
• adjective
Related by blood, marriage, or shared ancestry; of the same family or kind.
"She discovered through genealogical research that her family is kin to several early settlers of the valley."
Word Nuance & Usage
As a noun, 'kin' is typically used as a plural collective noun taking a plural verb (e.g., 'all my kin are here'). As an adjective meaning 'related', it is used almost exclusively in the predicate position (e.g., 'she is kin to them').
• Rhymes for kin
• Nearby Words
Word Origin & Etymology
From Old English 'cynn', meaning family, race, or kind, from Proto-Germanic '*kunja-', which ultimately derives from the Proto-Indo-European root '*gene-' (to give birth or beget), making it a distant cognate of Latin 'genus' and Greek 'genos'.