Kin Words

Kin Words Kin Words Kin Words By Maeve Maddox The other night a local television anchorman, not noted for a large or literary vocabulary, surprised me with the following: I feel such a kinsmanship with these survivors. The anchor’s sentiment was kind, but kinsmanship is out of place in modern English. Kinsmanship has an entry in the OED, and Emily Dickinson (1830- 1886) used it. It shows up on the Ngram Viewer, but at a minuscule percentage compared to the far more common kinship. And Word’s spellchecker underlines it in red. It’s safe to say that kinsmanship has been replaced by kinship as the modern English word to describe a sense of fellow feeling. A kinsman is â€Å"a blood relation,† but the word is not common in ordinary speech. It has a literary feel, as in the title Two Noble Kinsmen. Both kinsman and kinship derive from the same Old English noun: cynn, a word with several meanings, one of which is â€Å"people related by blood.† From the same word we also get kind in the sense of class or group. Kinship is what one feels for people with whom we identify in some way, people who are of the same kind as we. Here are some recent uses of kinship on the Web: Quecreek  survivor feels kinship  with Chile miners.   When two  firefighters  meet for the first time, they will  feel  a  kinship  with each  other that transcends many other examples of mutual hobbies or interests. Why do so many feel a connection - be it kinship or competition - with utter strangers just because they share a name? Kids who’ve lost limbs find kinship at Camp No Limits on Lake  Coeur  d’Alene The nouns kin and kinfolk refer to people related by blood ties: I had, it seemed to me, hundreds of kin- aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins- near the small town of Oak Hill, Ohio. By adolescence, â€Å"what to do with Eleanor† began to concern her Roosevelt kin. Arab immigrants are bound to each other by strong  family  ties, and most want to live and work  close  to  kin.   While Arthur was serving in the New York militia during the conflict, his wife privately sympathized with the Confederacy, for which many of her Virginia kinfolk were fighting. A qualitative approach was used to look into the experiences of male caregivers in offering to look after kinfolk with harsh psychological sickness. The expression â€Å"next of kin† means â€Å"the closest living relative† and is often used in a legal context: Historically, the next of kin have exercised proprietary rights in the control of dead bodies. If the person is under 18, the parent, legal guardian, custodian or next of kin may have authority to apply on the person’s behalf. Police are withholding the name of the deceased, pending notification of next of kin. Finally, the idiom kith and kin means friends and family. The noun kith is related to the archaic adjective couth, known or familiar. Kith are people one is acquainted with. Here are examples of this idiom: People helped each other and expected help in  return. This included soldiers who assumed  kith and kin  would help the wives and children they left behind. As the album title suggests, Selways songs are laced with references to his  kith and kin. I had  neither kith nor kin  in England, and was therefore as free as air.   â€Å"Mind you,† said the  old man, â€Å"even if I make good on this reef, Ive  neither kith nor kin to leave my money to.   Note: Kin is frequently used alone, but kith seems always to be linked to kin Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Regarding Re:25 Russian Words Used in English (and 25 More That Should Be)Sentence Adverbs