cousin
Forms
- Plural
- cousins
- present (v1)
- cousin
- past (v2)
- cousined
- past participle (v3)
- cousined
- present participle
- cousining
- 3rd person singular
- cousins
Definitions
1.Chiefly with a qualifying word: Any relation (especially a distant one) who is not a direct ancestor or descendant but part of a person's extended family; a kinsman or kinswoman.
- Although we were cousins, we grew up like sisters.
2.A person of an ethnicity or nationality regarded as closely related to someone of another ethnicity or nationality.
- I have a cousin who is a lawyer.
3.Used by a monarch to address another monarch, or a noble; specifically (UK) in commissions and writs by the Crown: used in this way to address a viscount or another peer of higher rank.
- I have a cousin who is a lawyer.
4.Used as a term of address for someone whom one is close to; also, (preceding a first name, sometimes capitalized as Cousin) a title for such a person.
- Marry quep, my cousin the weaver! And why the cucking-stool, I pray?, because my young lady is comely, and the young squire is a man of mettle, reverence to his beard that is yet to come?
1.To associate with someone or something on a close basis.(informal)
- The UK has fiscal arithmetic cousined with that of Greece, but is dealing with it.
2.To visit a cousin or other relation.(informal)
- The pretty wren perches now in the Governor's house, a-cousining, a-cousining.
- It isn't the thing for a man to be like a stranger to his own flesh and blood. I'm going cousining, Sue, down East, and I'll hunt up my relations.
- In 1878 they were married in the Mormon Temple in St. George, 300 miles away, and he drove her back home in a hay wagon in eight days. They "cousined" (stopped with relatives) all the way.
Frequency
Overall
Uncommon· #2663
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Rare
- General reading & writing
- Uncommon
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Rare
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English cosin, cosine, cosyn (“blood relative, kinsman or kinswoman; any relative; nephew or niece; first cousin; grandson or granddaughter; descendant; godchild or godparent, or a relative of a godchild or godparent; (figurative) closely related or similar thing”) [and other forms], and then: