cous·in

(kŭz′ĭn)

1. A child of one's aunt or uncle. Also called first cousin.

2. A relative descended from a common ancestor, such as a grandparent, by two or more steps in a diverging line.

3. A relative by blood or marriage; a kinsman or kinswoman.

4. A member of a kindred group or country: our Canadian cousins.

5. Something similar in quality or character: "There's no mistaking soca for its distant Jamaican cousin, reggae" (Michael Saunders).

6. Used as a form of address by a sovereign in addressing another sovereign or a high-ranking member of the nobility.

[Middle English cosin, a relative, from Old French, from Latin cōnsōbrīnus, cousin : com-, com- + sōbrīnus, cousin on the mother's side; see swesor- in Indo-European roots.]

cous′in·hood′ n.

cous′in·ly adj.

cous′in·ship′ n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

References in classic literature

But while he is stately in the cousinship of the Everybodys, he is a kind and generous man, according to his dignified way, in the cousinship of the Nobodys; and at the present time, in despite of the damp, he stays out the visit of several such cousins at Chesney Wold with the constancy of a martyr.

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His creed of determinism was such that it almost amounted to a vice, and quite amounted, on its negative side, to a renunciative philosophy which had cousinship with that of Schopenhauer and Leopardi.

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But there is nought in the world so easily forgot as gratitude; so, when the Prioress of Kirklees had heard how her cousin, the Earl of Huntingdon, had thrown away his earldom and gone back again to Sherwood, she was vexed to the soul, and feared lest her cousinship with him should bring the King's wrath upon her also.

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