NODE / 1059attestedMiddle English

kin / kyn / kun

TRANSLITERATION kin / kyn / kun

race, people, tribe, family, relatives, ancestry, kind, or category

DATE: Middle English
SENSE: family lineage
FAMILY: Indo-European / West Germanic
CANONICAL KEY: node:2:kin-kyn-kun:attested:sense:family-lineage

The Middle English Dictionary records a much larger form inventory, including kin, kine, kinne, cinne, kunne, cunne, kenne, and early inflected spellings. The display is representative, not exhaustive.

ANCESTRAL EDGES

ROOT OF THIS ROOT

GO DEEPERinheritanceestablished

Old English · Old English · kindred race kind

cynn

kindred, kind, race, nation, people, tribe, family, lineage, generation, or progeny

SOUND: Middle English kin, kyn, kinne, and related forms continue Old English cynn; y is commonly unrounded toward i and the inherited long consonant ceases to be contrastively represented in the modern monosyllable.
MEANING: Old English kindred, race, people, tribe, family, lineage, generation, kind, and gender senses continue unevenly into the medieval kin family.
CHRONOLOGY: Old English into Middle English.
SCHOLAR: Middle English Dictionary Editors · Joseph Bosworth · T. Northcote Toller
CONFIDENCE: established — The dictionaries publish the direct ancestry and form inventories; the graph does not pretend one spelling changed everywhere at once.

Kin n. — Middle English DictionarysupportsMED24246, Forms, Etymology: OE cyn, and senses 1–5

Publishes the Middle English variants, direct Old English ancestry, and broad sense inventory.

ORIGINAL ↗

Cyn, cynn — Bosworth–Toller Anglo-Saxon DictionarysupportsHeadword CYN, cynn and semantic inventory

Publishes the Old English form and source semantic field.

ORIGINAL ↗

OPEN CANONICAL EDGE 1055 ↗

DIRECT DESCENDANT EDGES

THE NEXT HISTORICAL STEP

DESCENDANThistorical continuationestablished

Present-Day English · before the 12th century–today · family relatives

kin

a group of common ancestry; relatives; kindred

SOUND: Middle English kin survives as the modern spelling and pronunciation after competing medieval variants recede; no unsupported single dialect is treated as the sole donor.
MEANING: The broad race, people, family, ancestry, kind, and category field narrows in ordinary modern use toward relatives, common ancestry, and kindred relationship.
CHRONOLOGY: Middle English into modern English.
SCHOLAR: Merriam-Webster Editors · Middle English Dictionary Editors
CONFIDENCE: established — The form continuity and semantic inventories are directly documented; the edge does not assign every sense loss an invented exact date.

Kin — definition, etymology, and first known usesupportsKin noun senses, etymology, and first-known-use section

Documents the modern noun and adjective, direct Old English ancestry, and before-twelfth-century horizon.

ORIGINAL ↗

Kin n. — Middle English DictionarycontextMED24246, Forms and senses 1–5

Documents the medieval spelling and semantic range inherited into modern English.

ORIGINAL ↗

OPEN CANONICAL EDGE 1054 ↗

TRANSITIVE DESCENDANT CLOSURE

EVERY REVIEWED BRANCH FROM HERE

This is the complete downstream closure currently supported by the canonical graph. Every displayed step is a real reviewed edge with its own sound claim, meaning claim, scholar, confidence, and citations.

UNIQUE DESCENDANT NODES: 1
REVIEWED EDGES: 1
DEEPEST PATH: 1
MODERN DOSSIERS REACHED: 1

kin1 connected node

HISTORICAL STEP 011 EDGE

STEP 01historical continuationestablished

Middle Englishkin / kyn / kun→Present-Day English · before the 12th century–todaykina group of common ancestry; relatives; kindred

SOUND: Middle English kin survives as the modern spelling and pronunciation after competing medieval variants recede; no unsupported single dialect is treated as the sole donor.
MEANING: The broad race, people, family, ancestry, kind, and category field narrows in ordinary modern use toward relatives, common ancestry, and kindred relationship.

Merriam-Webster Editors · Middle English Dictionary Editors2 CITATIONSEDGE 1054 ↗

Kin — definition, etymology, and first known use · Kin noun senses, etymology, and first-known-use section ↗Kin n. — Middle English Dictionary · MED24246, Forms and senses 1–5 ↗

“Every” means every descendant in the reviewed SET-U graph. It does not convert missing scholarship or missing ingestion into a claim of historical completeness. The coverage ledger remains the honest denominator.

RECORDED EVIDENCE

ATTESTATIONS / FIRST KNOWN USE

SOURCE-REPORTEDlexical corpus recordestablished

circa 1175 quotation reported by the Middle English Dictionary

Ormulum kin quotation in the Middle English Dictionary

Baþe wærenn off an kinn, Josæp & Sannte Marȝe

kin dossier · recorded as kin / kyn / kun

Middle English Compendium · University of Michigan Library · MED24246 · Ormulum (Jun 1) 2069WITNESS RECORD ↗Kin n. — Middle English Dictionary ↗

EDITORIAL REUSE

WORD DOSSIERS USING THIS NODE

02kinkin / kyn / kun · established