Cousin
nounA child of one's uncle or aunt, or more loosely any relative beyond the immediate family.
How to spell cousin
6 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce cousin
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does cousin mean?
- nounA child of one's uncle or aunt, or more loosely any relative beyond the immediate family.
Cousin in a sentence
-
My cousin flew in from Canada for the wedding.
-
My cousin and I spent every summer at our grandmother's house.
Where does cousin come from?
Language of origin: French
Cousin came into English in the early 1200s from Old French cosin, which traced back to the Latin consobrinus. That Latin word literally meant the child of one's mother's sister, formed from com- meaning 'together' and sobrinus, itself derived from soror meaning 'sister'. Over time the meaning broadened from a precise type of relative to the much looser sense we use today, any relation outside the immediate family. The spelling trap is the unstressed second syllable: the -ou- sounds like a plain 'uh' and the ending sounds like '-zin', so writers reach for spellings like 'cousine' or 'cuzin'. The same Latin root for 'sister' that hides inside cousin also survives in the word 'sorority', which makes the family connection genuinely literal.
How the word is built
- cous- (from Latin consobrinus, a relative through siblings)
- -in (anglicised noun ending from Old French cosin)
Fix your spelling for good.
Spelling Garden finds the words you personally get wrong, plants them in a garden, and brings each one back just before you would have forgotten it.
Just five minutes a day is all it takes to fix your spelling.