cousin
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "cousin", 6-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "cousin" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "cousin" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
cousin is aEnglishnoun. It means: 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. Pronounced /ˈkʌzn̩/. It ranks #3,550 in English word frequency. Often confused with cumin and cousins.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cousin |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈkʌzn̩/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #3,550 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 14 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for cousin is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈkʌzn̩/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,550 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for cousin, with forms such as "ccousin", "cosuin", and "couisn". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 14 confusable-pair relationships, "cumin", "cousins", "coin", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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; (figura… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is cousin, spelled C-O-U-S-I-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Chiefly 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.
- 2Chiefly 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.
- 3Chiefly 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.
- 4A person of an ethnicity or nationality regarded as closely related to someone of another ethnicity or nationality.
- 5Used 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.
- 6Used by a monarch to address another monarch, or a noble; specifically (British) in commissions and writs by the Crown: used in this way to address a viscount or another peer of higher rank.
- 7Something kindred or related to something else; a relative.
- 8A female sexual partner who is not a person's wife; specifically, a prostitute.
- 9A person who is swindled; a dupe.
- 10A person who womanizes; a seducer, a womanizer.
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: * from Anglo-Norman cosen, cosin [and other forms], Middle French cosin, and Old French cosin (“collateral male relative more distant than one’s brother; form of address used by a monarch to male monarchs or nobles”) [and other forms] (modern French cousin); and * from Anglo-Norman cosine, Middle French cosine, and Old French cosine (“collateral female relative more distant than one’s sister; form of address used by a monarch to female monarchs or nobles”) [and other forms] (modern French cousine), from Latin cōnsobrīnus (“maternal cousin; first cousin; relation”) (possibly through Vulgar Latin *cōsuīnus, from *cōsobīnus), from con- (prefix denoting a bringing together of several objects) + sobrīnus (“maternal cousin; sister’s son; any nephew”) (from a noun use of Proto-Italic *swezrīnos (“of or belonging to a sister”, adjective) (with the first syllable influenced by Latin soror (“sister”)), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *swésōr (“sister”), possibly from *swé (“self”) + *h₁ésh₂r̥ (“blood”) (that is, a woman of one’s own blood) or *-sōr (feminine suffix)). The verb is derived from the noun.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccousin,cosuin,couisn,cousinn,cousni,coussin,cuosin,ocusin
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for cousin
Misspelling Variants of "cousin"
Frequency rank: #3,550 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: