From Middle English Cosyn , a surname from Norman terminology. From Anglo-Norman , from Old French cusin , cosin , cousin ( “ cousin ” ) ( French cousin , cousine ) . Literally, “ familial relative ” .
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WIKTIONARY VIA KAIKKI / WIKTEXTRACT
Imported dictionary evidence
These are source reports, not reviewed *SET-U ancestry. A list of templates or numbered etymologies is not an ancestor chain. Scholarly disagreements remain in the original source text.
35,981 English word records · 45,491 etymology sections in this online subset
PARTIAL ENGLISH COVERAGE · FULL CORPUS REMAINS LOCALNo exact match for “Cousin” in this partial English subset. That does not mean the full research corpus—or linguistic scholarship—has no record. Check the original dictionary entry ↗
INDEPENDENT SOURCE LIBRARY
More sources for this spelling
These are spelling matches, not a claim of identical senses or agreement. Historical accounts retain their own editions and limits; none is automatically promoted into reviewed ancestry.
Browse the independently attributed sources →Cousin
This word is outside the curated dossier collection. Here is the dictionary’s etymology, with its language and revision preserved. These claims have not yet passed *SET-U’s graph review.
From cousin , in reference to an incident when a fan of the character Nick Knight , Sharon Scott, admitted that she had a fear of frogs and after two other members of the mailing list who were fans of Lucien LaCroix sent her chocolate frogs in the mail, replied that the two were so cruel that they must be cousins.
Ca. 1600, from Middle French cousin , from Latin consobrinus .
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0111
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
German masculine nouncontrarian claim
Feind
The modern German noun for a personal, political, military, or ideological enemy or opponent. Duden derives it through Middle High German vīnt or vīant and Old High German fīand, literally the hating one; DWDS dates Old High German fīant and fījant to the eighth century and identifies the Germanic ancestor as a petrified substantivized present participle. Grimm’s dictionary independently compares Gothic fijands, Old English fēond, English fiend, Dutch vijand, and Nordic forms, while warning that its own still-deeper foam hypothesis required confirmation. The reviewed route therefore follows the inherited enemy noun to reconstructed *fi(j)and- and *fi(j)ēn-, then treats *peh₁- as proposed and stops.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
chai
In current English, a South Asian-style tea commonly prepared with milk and spices; the word belongs to the overland cha/chay transmission family ultimately derived from Chinese 茶.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
dough
A kneadable flour mixture; inherited from Old English dāg through a Germanic formation on the Indo-European form-and-build root.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
humus
The dark organic portion of soil; an English scientific borrowing through New Latin from Latin humus, earth or ground.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗adjectivecontrarian claim
royal
Of a monarch, crown, or kingdom; borrowed through Anglo-French from Latin rēgālis and rēx.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
rí
The Old Irish word for a king, with genitive ríg, inherited from Proto-Celtic *rīx-s in the Indo-European king branch.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
rājā
The Sanskrit nominative singular meaning king, sovereign, prince, or chief, belonging to the consonant stem rājan-.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗stative · modifier · nouncontrarian claim
tapu
A Māori word for what is sacred, prohibited, restricted, set apart, or under atua protection, inherited within the wider Oceanic *tampu family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun, adjective, pronouncontrarian claim
ten
The inherited English cardinal number, carried through Old English and Germanic from the Indo-European numeral also reflected in Latin decem.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
tree
A perennial woody plant; inherited through Old English trēow and Germanic *trewam from the firmness-and-wood branch of *deru-.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
word
A meaningful spoken or written unit; an inherited English form whose Germanic branch is cognate with Latin verbum rather than borrowed from it.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗020
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
No reviewed record in this collection contains “cousin.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
0322
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 11
resolvedestablishedposition text
Is English fiend descended from Gothic fijands?
No. English fiend continues Old English fēond; Gothic fijands is a collateral Germanic cousin. Both meet at reconstructed *fi(j)and-.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Is English fiend descended from Gothic fijands?
No. English fiend continues Old English feónd; Gothic fijands is a collateral Germanic cousin from the same reconstructed formation, not the donor of the English word.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Are fjándi and frændi cognates because they form a memorable pair?
No evidence here establishes that. ONP documents a rhetorical and semantic opposition, while the ancestry graph routes fjándi through *fi(j)and-.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Is English fiend descended from Gothic fijands?
No. English fiend continues Old English fēond; Gothic fijands is a collateral Germanic cousin. Both meet at the reconstructed *fi(j)and- formation.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Is kind simply kin plus a final d?
No. Kin continues Germanic *kunja- from a *-yo- formation, while kind continues noun *kundjaz and adjective *kundiz from a *-t- formation. They are deep cousins that meet at *ǵenh₁-, not one modern word built by adding d to the other.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does law descend from lay—or lay from law?
Neither. They are lexical cousins whose lineages converge at reconstructed *legh-. Law reaches it through a Scandinavian nominal formation; lay reaches it through an inherited causative verb.
resolvedprobableposition text
Did Dutch lief come from English love?
No. Dutch lief is an inherited Germanic adjective cognate with forms including Gothic liufs and German lieb; English love is a separate noun descendant in the same wider family.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Are royal and right unrelated lookalikes?
No. They are not close derivatives of each other, but both occupy documented branches under the reconstructed straight-and-direct root.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does rule descend directly from English right?
No. They are deep cousins: rule comes through French and Latin rēgula, while right follows Germanic *rehtaz.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Is select descended from English lecture or lesson?
No. The English words are cousins. Select comes from Latin selectus and seligere; lecture and lesson take other Latin formations that independently reach legere.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did the English word shah produce check?
No. English shah and English check are cousins: both reach back independently to Persian šāh, while check travels through chess, Arabic, and French.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 11
RANK 10GRADE Acontrarian claim
Andean neighbors need not be linguistic cousins.
Alpaca comes from Aymara while llama comes from Quechua: the words travel through Spanish from different families.
RANK 36GRADE Acontrarian claim
German Feind is English fiend’s undemonic cousin: both fossilize one who hates.
Duden, DWDS/Pfeifer, and Grimm independently carry Feind through Middle and Old High German to a substantivized hating participle. OED places English fiend on the collateral Old English branch. German retained the ordinary enemy or opponent at its semantic center; English turned the cognate toward Devil, demon, and vicious person.
RANK 74GRADE Acontrarian claim
Lay and law are cousins; the other lays are strangers.
The set-down verb and law meet at *legh-. Lay the poem and lay meaning non-clerical arrived through different French, Latin, and Greek histories.
RANK 95GRADE Acontrarian claim
Ten and decimal are cousins, not borrower and source.
English ten is inherited through Germanic; decimal is learned through Latin. Both independently continue the reconstructed Indo-European numeral family.
RANK 96GRADE Acontrarian claim
Word and verb are cousins, not a borrowing pair.
English word descends through Germanic *wurdam and zero-grade *wr-dho-. English verb arrives through French from Latin verbum and the full-grade *wer-dho- branch. They meet only at reconstructed *werh1- “speak.”
RANK 106GRADE Acontrarian claim
Royal and right are deep cousins.
Royal follows Latin rēgālis and rēx through the king branch; right follows Germanic *rehtaz through the straight-and-correct branch. They meet at reconstructed *h₃reg-.
RANK 110GRADE Acontrarian claim
Irish rí and Latin rēx are cousins, not copies.
Old Irish rí and genitive ríg descend from Proto-Celtic *rīx-s and *rīg-os, while Latin rēx follows the parallel Italic branch.
RANK 127GRADE Acontrarian claim
Dough and lady are deep cousins.
Germanic *daigaz, dough, and *dīg-, the kneading branch inside lady, meet at *dheigh-, to form or build.
RANK 143GRADE Acontrarian claim
Salary is truly salt's cousin—and the famous story is still false.
Salt and salary meet in the inherited salt family. Real kinship does not prove Roman soldiers received ordinary wages in literal salt.
RANK 170GRADE Aranked reveal
Not knowing has its own science-family word.
Nescience descends through Latin nescientia and nescīre, built from ne- “not” plus scīre “know.” It is science’s historical negative cousin, not a recent parody.
RANK 199GRADE A-contrarian claim
Dutch lief is love’s adjective cousin, not its child.
Dutch lief belongs with Gothic liufs and German lieb in the inherited dear-or-beloved adjective branch. English love is a separate noun route in the same deeper family.
040
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “cousin.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
050
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
No reviewed record in this collection contains “cousin.” Absence describes this graph, not all of linguistic scholarship.
06
SEARCH IS DISCOVERY, NOT PROOF
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Matching text only locates a record. It does not raise confidence, settle a dispute, establish cognacy, or turn a source report into direct inspection. Follow the result into its citations and editorial limits.