Meanings
- uncountableThe quality of being cousinly.
There was no way that Elizabeth, with her own particular nature, could have indulged in feelings of sisterliness or cousinliness towards Mary, as she had to defend herself: it was ultimately survival.
2010, Anton Burge, Portraying Elizabeth: Elizabeth I on Stage and Screen, and the Actresses Who Have Played Her, Matador, Troubador Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 362 more examples
Unkindness would have implied intimacy, or, at any rate, cousinliness, whereas, but for his presence in her boudoir, and his familiar tone with her mother, a stranger might have supposed the two young people to be the merest casual acquaintances.
[1871], [Mary,] Countess von Bothmer, Cruel as the Grave, volume II, London: Henry S. King & Co., page 44Now perhaps you will understand why, feeling this exuberance of joy and loving kindness as I mostly do, and your defenceless head having popped up within my range of late, I shower so much affection on you—quite passing the mild limits of cousinliness.
1897 May 4, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, edited by Mary A. Hill, A Journey from Within: The Love Letters of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1897-1900, Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses, published 1995, →ISBN, page 195
Origin
Cite this entry
cousinliness. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cousinliness
“cousinliness.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cousinliness. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cousinliness,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cousinliness.
Source: cousinliness on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.