different between heir vs kin

English

Alternative forms

• heire (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English heir, from Anglo-Norman eir, heir, from Latin h?r?s.

Pronunciation

• (US) enPR: âr, IPA^(key): /???/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /e?/
• Rhymes: -??(?)
• Homophones: air, Ayr, ere, eyre, are (unit of measurement); err (one pronunciation); e'er (US)

Noun

heir (plural heirs, feminine heiress)

1. Someone who inherits, or is designated to inherit, the property of another.
2. One who inherits, or has been designated to inherit, a hereditary title or office.

3. A successor in a role, representing continuity with the predecessor.
   • "I wish we were back in Tenth Street. But so many children came […] and the Tenth Street house wasn't half big enough; and a dreadful speculative builder built this house and persuaded Austin to buy it. Oh, dear, and here we are among the rich and great; and the steel kings and copper kings and oil kings and their heirs and dauphins. […]"

Synonyms

• (one who inherits property): beneficiary (law), inheritor
• (one who inherits title): inheritor
• (successor in a role): See also Thesaurus:successor

Related terms

Translations

Verb

heir (third-person singular simple present heirs, present participle heiring, simple past and past participle heired)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To inherit.
   • 1950, quoted in Our Garst family in America (page 27)

     […] Leonard Houtz & John Myer to be executors to this my last will & testament & lastly my children shall heir equally, one as much as the other.

See also

• legatee
• devisee

Anagrams

• Hire, ReHi, hire, rehi

Dutch

Pronunciation

Noun

heir n (plural heiren, diminutive heirtje n)

1. (archaic) Alternative spelling of heer (“army”)

Derived terms

Middle English

Etymology 1

From Anglo-Norman heir, aire (Old French eir), from Latin h?res (“heir”).

Noun

heir (plural heires)

1. heir

Alternative forms

• heire, heier, eir, eire, eier, ei?er, hair, haire, air, aire, are, her, here, hier, heyr, heyre, heyer, eyr, eyre, eyer, eyur, hayr, hayre, ayr, ayre, ayer, ayere, ayar, hyer
• nayr, nayre, nayer, nere (by rebracketing of an heir)

Descendants

• English: heir
• Scots: heir
• ? Welsh: aer

References

• “heir, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Etymology 2

Noun

heir

1. Alternative form of her (“hair”)

Etymology 3

Noun

heir

1. Alternative form of here (“army”)

Etymology 4

Pronoun

heir

1. Alternative form of hire (“her”)

Etymology 5

Noun

heir (plural heires or heiren)

1. Alternative form of here (“haircloth”)

Etymology 6

Adverb

heir

1. Alternative form of her (“here”)

Etymology 7

Determiner

heir

1. Alternative form of here (“their”)

Westrobothnian

Verb

hèir

1. Alternative spelling of hiir.

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: k?n, IPA^(key): /k?n/
• Rhymes: -?n

Etymology 1

From Middle English kin, kyn, ken, kun, from Old English cynn (“kind, sort, rank, quality, family, generation, offspring, pedigree, kin, race, people, gender, sex, propriety, etiquette”), from Proto-Germanic *kunj? (“race, generation, descent”), from Proto-Indo-European *?n?h?yom, from *?enh?- (“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”), and through Indo-European, with Latin genus (“kind, sort, ancestry, birth”), Ancient Greek ????? (génos, “kind, race”), Sanskrit ???? (jánas, “kind, race”), Albanian dhen (“(herd of) small cattle”).

Noun

kin (countable and uncountable, plural kin)

1. Race; family; breed; kind.
2. (collectively) Persons of the same race or family; kindred.
   • c. 1620, Francis Bacon, letter of advice to Sir George Villiers

     You are of kin, and so must be a friend to their persons.
3. One or more relatives, such as siblings or cousins, taken collectively.
4. Relationship; same-bloodedness or affinity; near connection or alliance, as of those having common descent.
5. Kind; sort; manner; way.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• kith
• clan

Further reading

• kin at OneLook Dictionary Search
• Kin in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

Adjective

kin (not comparable)

1. Related by blood or marriage, akin. Generally used in "kin to".

   It turns out my back-fence neighbor is kin to one of my co-workers.

Translations

Etymology 2

Noun

kin (plural kins)

1. A primitive Chinese musical instrument of the cittern kind, with from five to twenty-five silken strings.
   • 1899, Hugo Riemann, Catechism of Musical History: History of musical instruments and history of tone-systems and notation

     Originally they had only two cither-like instruments, which had flat sound-boxes without fingerboards, over which were strung rather a large number (25) of strings of twisted silk — the kin and tsche.

   • 1840, Elijah Coleman Bridgman, Samuel Wells Williams, The Chinese Repository (page 40)

     If a musician were going to give a lecture upon the mathematical part of his art, he would find a very elegant substitute for the monochord in the Chinese kin.

Etymology 3

Noun

kin (plural kins)

1. Alternative form of k'in

Etymology 4

Verb

kin

1. Pronunciation spelling of can.

Anagrams

• -nik, Nik, ink

Afrikaans

Etymology

From Dutch kin, from Middle Dutch kinne, from Old Dutch kinni, from Proto-Germanic *kinnuz, from Proto-Indo-European *?énus.

Noun

kin (plural kinne)

1. Alternative form of ken.

Czech

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?k?n]
• Rhymes: -?n

Noun

kin

1. genitive plural of kino

Anagrams

• nik

Dutch

Etymology

From Middle Dutch kinne, from Old Dutch kinni, from Proto-Germanic *kinnuz, from Proto-Indo-European *?énus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k?n/
• Hyphenation: kin
• Rhymes: -?n

Noun

kin f (plural kinnen, diminutive kinnetje n)

1. chin

Derived terms

• kinlijn
• onderkin

Descendants

• Afrikaans: kin

Guinea-Bissau Creole

Pronoun

kin

1. who

Hungarian

Etymology

ki +? -n

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?kin]

Pronoun

kin

1. superessive singular of ki

Ido

Etymology

From French cinq, Spanish cinco, Italian cinque, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pénk?e.

Numeral

kin

1. five (5)

Japanese

Romanization

kin

1. R?maji transcription of ??

Min Nan

Navajo

Etymology

Compare Dogrib k??.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [kx???n]

Noun

kin

1. market, store

2. house, cabin, building
3. town

Inflection

Synonyms

• (town): kin shijaa?, kin ?ání, kintah

Derived terms

• k??h (“into the town”)
• kinsáá? (“ruin”)

See also

• hooghan

Ngarrindjeri

Pronoun

kin

1. him

Northern Kurdish

Adjective

kin ?

1. short

Synonyms

• kurt
• qut
• quse

West Frisian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k?n/

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle Low German kinne, kin, from Old Saxon kinni.

Noun

kin n (plural kinnen, diminutive kintsje)

1. chin

Derived terms

• ûnderkin

Further reading

• “kin”, in Wurdboek fan de Fryske taal (in Dutch), 2011

Yagara

Noun

kin

1. Alternative form of ginn.

References

• State Library of Queensland, 2019 INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES ‘WORD OF THE WEEK’: WEEK EIGHTEEN., 13 May 2019.