See Also:

kin(3) (iou)



kin noun & adjective.
[Old English cyn(n = Old Frisian kin, ken, kon, Old Saxon, Old High German kunni (Dutch kunne), Old Norse kyn, Gothic kuni, from Germanic, from Indo-European base also of Greek genos, Latin genus race, GENUS.]
A. noun.
I. Family, race, blood relations.
A group of people descended from a common ancestor; spec. a family, a clan. Formerly also, the progeny of a specified ancestor. Long rare. OE.
a. collect. One's family, one's relatives; relatives; transf. people or things of a similar kind. OE.
E. Ingersoll The martens.., skunks, otters and their kin of the family Mustelidae. G. Stein These relatives of hers..were the only kin she had. A. Toffler We expect ties with our immediate family, and to a lesser extent with other kin. A. Burgess George..gave a great dinner for his kin at the Midland Hotel. Sunday Times The middle-classes and their kin.
b. A member of one's family, a relative. arch. OE.
Ancestral stock; family. Esp. in of good kin, of noble kin. Long obsolete exc. dial. OE.
The quality, condition, or fact of being related by birth or descent; kinship, consanguinity. Now rare or obsolete. LME.
II. Class, group, division.
A natural class, group, or division of people, animals, plants, etc., with shared attributes or ancestry; spec. a race, a species. OE-E16.
b. A kind of (person or thing). OE-L16.
Phrases: kissing kin: see KISSING ppl adjective. kith and kin: see KITH noun 3. near of kin closely related. next of kin the living person or persons standing in the nearest degree of relationship to another, and entitled to share in his or her personal estate in case of intestacy. of kin (a) (long rare) by birth or descent; (b) related by blood or in character, akin. store the kin: see STORE verb.
Comb.: kin group a group of people related by blood or marriage; kin selection Biology a form of natural selection in which an apparently disadvantageous characteristic (esp. altruistic behaviour) increases in the population due to increased survival of individuals genetically related to those possessing the characteristic.
b. pred. adjective. Related; akin (to). L16.
Shakespeare Troilus & Cressida One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.