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WORD → PARENT → PARENT → UNKNOWNGO TO
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START / NODE 1058Present-Day Englishbefore the 12th century–today
kin
The inherited English family word continuing Middle English kin and Old English cynn, from the Germanic lineage formation *kunja- and ultimately the birth-and-generation root *ǵenh₁-.
“Kin is not a shortening of king. The historical direction runs the other way at the morphological level: the Germanic king title is built on the older kin or lineage base.”OPEN COMPLETE WORD DOSSIER ↗
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01
PARENT ROUTES1 REVIEWED RELATIONSHIP
Present-Day Englishkin
a group of common ancestry; relatives; kindred
↑GO DEEPER
Middle English · Middle Englishkin / kyn / kunrace, people, tribe, family, relatives, ancestry, kind, or category
- SOUND CHANGE
- 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.
- SEMANTIC CHANGE
- The broad race, people, family, ancestry, kind, and category field narrows in ordinary modern use toward relatives, common ancestry, and kindred relationship.
- 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.
- CHRONOLOGY
- Middle English into modern English.
2 CITATIONSKin — definition, etymology, and first known useKin noun senses, etymology, and first-known-use section Kin n. — Middle English DictionaryMED24246, Forms and senses 1–5 AUDIT CANONICAL EDGE 1054 ↗
Documents the modern noun and adjective, direct Old English ancestry, and before-twelfth-century horizon.
ORIGINAL ↗Documents the medieval spelling and semantic range inherited into modern English.
ORIGINAL ↗THE ASTERISK IS A PROMISE
RECONSTRUCTION IS
NOT INSCRIPTION.
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