cousinship

cousin +‎ -ship

• IPA^(key): /ˈkʌzənˌʃɪp/

cousinship (countable and uncountable, plural cousinships)

1. The state of being cousins, or the relationship that exists among cousins.
   • 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre‎:

     “How long did you reside with him and his sisters after the cousinship was discovered?”

   • 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles‎:

     His creed of determinism was such that it almost amounted to a vice, and quite amounted, on its negative side, to a renunciative philosophy which had cousinship with that of Schopenhauer and Leopardi.

   • 1921, George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah‎:

     What he repudiated was cousinship with the ape, and the implied suspicion of a rudimentary tail, because it was offensive to his sense of his own dignity, and because he thought that apes were ridiculous, and tails diabolical when associated with the erect posture.

   • 2009 October 11, Nicholas Wade, “Evolution All Around”, in The New York Times‎:

     He describes a beautiful thought experiment to demonstrate a rabbit’s cousinship to a leopard.

   Synonym: cousinhood

   Hypernym: kinship