kin
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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3 characters
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "kin", 3-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 "kin" 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 "kin" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
kin is aEnglishnoun. It means: Race; family; breed; kind. Pronounced /kɪn/. Often confused with ky and ko.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | kin |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kɪn/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #12,087 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for kin is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kɪn/. Corpus data places it at rank #12,087 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for kin in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ky", "ko", "Ku", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English kyn, from Old English cynn (“kind, sort, rank”), from Proto-West Germanic *kuni, from Proto-Germanic *kunją (“race, generation, descent”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵn̥h₁yom, from *ǵenh₁- (“to produce”). Cognate with Scots kin (“relative… 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 kin, spelled K-I-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Race; family; breed; kind.
- 2Persons of the same race or family; kindred.
- 3One or more relatives, such as siblings or cousins, taken collectively.
- 4Relationship; same-bloodedness or affinity; near connection or alliance, as of those having common descent.
Etymology
From Middle English kyn, from Old English cynn (“kind, sort, rank”), from Proto-West Germanic *kuni, from Proto-Germanic *kunją (“race, generation, descent”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵn̥h₁yom, from *ǵenh₁- (“to produce”). Cognate with Scots kin (“relatives, kinfolk”), North Frisian kinn, kenn (“gender, race, family, kinship”), Dutch kunne (“gender, sex”), Middle Low German kunne (“gender, sex, race, family, lineage”), Danish køn (“gender, sex”), Swedish kön (“gender, sex”), Icelandic kyn (“gender”), Finnish kunnia (“honour, glory”), Ingrian kunnia (“reputation”), and through Indo-European, with Latin genus (“kind, sort, ancestry, birth”), Ancient Greek γένος (génos, “kind, race”), Sanskrit जनस् (jánas, “kind, race”), Albanian dhen (“(herd of) small cattle”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #12,087 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter K in our English index: