kin

plural kins

1. countableuncountableRace; family; breed; kind.

   the starfish and its kin the sea urchin

2. collectivecountableuncountablePersons 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.

   1 more example

   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

3. countableuncountableOne 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 India, page 280

4. countableuncountableRelationship; 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] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 248

1. not comparableuncommonRelated by blood or marriage, akin. (It is more common to form sentences using the noun instead.)

   For quotations using this term, see Citations:kin.

   3 more examples

   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 walked[…]

   1914, Zona Gale, Neighborhood Stories, page 155

   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 be suckled[…]

   1925, Therese Kayser Lindsey, Blue Norther: Texas Poems, page 53

plural kins

1. alternativeAlternative form of qin (“Chinese string instrument”).

   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 Chinese Repository, page 40

   1 more example

   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 Riemann, Catechism of Musical History: History of musical instruments and history of tone-systems and notation

present singular third person kins · participle present kinning · participle past kinned · past kinned

1. slangtransitivelifestyleTo identify with; as in spiritually connect to a fictional or non-fictional being.

plural kins

1. slanglifestyleA fictional or non-fictional being whom one spiritually connects to.
2. slanglifestyleSomeone who identifies as a certain fictional character.

plural kins

1. alternativeAlternative form of k'in.

1. pronunciation spellingPronunciation 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

1. abbreviationclippingcolloquialuncountableClipping of kinesiology.

1. alternativeobsoleteAlternative form of Jin.

1. abbreviationclippingClipping of Kinshasa.