cousin
Meanings
- 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.
- Preceded by an ordinal number, as first, second, third, etc.: a person descended from a common ancestor by the same number of generations as another person.
- When used without a qualifying word: the child of a person's parent's brother (that is, an uncle) or sister (an aunt); a cousin-german, a first cousin.
- A person of an ethnicity or nationality regarded as closely related to someone of another ethnicity or nationality.
- Used 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.
- Used 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.
- Something kindred or related to something else; a relative.
- A female sexual partner who is not a person's wife; specifically, a prostitute.
- A person who is swindled; a dupe.
- A person who womanizes; a seducer, a womanizer.
- To address (someone) as "cousin".
- To regard (oneself or someone) as a cousin to another person.
- To associate with someone or something on a close basis.
- To visit a cousin or other relation.
- A surname from Middle English.
- A fan of the character Lucien LaCroix from the Canadian television series Forever Knight.
Pronunciation
Word forms
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.