Noun
They are her distant kin.
invited all of his kith and kin to his graduation party
Recent Examples on the Web
Noun
In the monolithic rule of the Kim family in Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, top officials outside Kim Jong-un’s immediate kin are ultimately considered expendable.—Choe Sang-Hun, New York Times, 8 May 2024 Jonathan Esparza, who was enjoying food and drinks with his kin before going into the stadium, went to that 2-1 victory over LAFC last spring.—Joseph Dycus, The Mercury News, 4 May 2024 The king of the dinosaurs may have not been the only Cretaceous carnivore to prey on its own kin.—Alex Orlando, Discover Magazine, 1 May 2024 The 65-year-old performer showed support for his son, Chris, who placed third on Monday night's season finale of the ABC reality competition series, which pitted a group of people with famous relatives against each other in an attempt to guess each other's celebrity kin.—Joey Nolfi, EW.com, 29 Aug. 2023 Despite its urban location, the route has the same daring elements as its mountain kin.—Shoshi Parks, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 Feb. 2024 Ernest Burkhart, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, marries an Osage woman, Mollie (Lily Gladstone), and then, acting on instructions from his uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro), sets upon a scheme of helping to kill her kin.—Glenn Whipp, Los Angeles Times, 8 Jan. 2024 As one of our closest kin in the animal world, chimpanzees, with their striking similarities and intriguing differences to humans, offer a glimpse into our own ancestry.—Jake Parks, Discover Magazine, 30 Jan. 2024 By any moniker, the bluegill enjoys top-shelf status among its sunfish kin.—David A. Brown, Field & Stream, 11 Jan. 2024
Adjective
Bennett’s musings have an ethical component: if a nuisance tree, or a dead tree, or a dead rat is my kin, then everything is kin—even a piece of trash.—Morgan Meis, The New Yorker, 28 Feb. 2023 The Oscar winners have been friends for half a century and their kin span generations.—Emily St. Martin, Los Angeles Times, 1 June 2023 As for the common people, geographical and social isolation is sharply mitigated by modern transportation networks, as well as larger scale non-kin institutions such as the Christian church.—Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 25 Aug. 2010
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'kin.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Etymology
Noun
Middle English, from Old English cynn; akin to Old High German chunni race, Latin genus birth, race, kind, Greek genos, Latin gignere to beget, Greek gignesthai to be born
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