Kinsmen

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A member of the same family or clan, often indicating a blood relationship or close familial ties
2. Relatives or individuals who share a common ancestry or lineage, emphasizing connections by birth
3. Individuals related by blood or marriage, highlighting familial bonds and kinship ties

Etymology: "Kinsmen" is the plural of "kinsman," and the single word is a compound built from an older genitive phrase. In late Old English, speakers wrote "cinnes man," literally "man of the kin," with "cinnes" as the genitive of "cynn," the ancestor of modern "kin." Over the Middle English period the two words fused into "kynnesman," and the genitive ending gradually dropped away, leaving the familiar "kin" plus "-s-" plus "man" structure visible in the spelling. The result is a word that carries the original sense of "family" in its first element while the second element simply means "man," so the term literally described a man belonging to one's kin group. Its plural, "kinsmen," follows the regular English pattern of replacing "man" with "men," which is why the word still sounds like it belongs to the same family as "kin" itself.

Synonyms: relatives, family, kin