Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Linked by a close relationship.
  • adjective Beholden to another; bound.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Joined by affinity or any close tie; akin; allied; confederated.
  • Bound or obligated by affinity or some intimate relation.
  • In zoology, joined in natural affinity; having affinity; allied homologically and morphologically; related in structural character.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective obsolete Joined in affinity or by any tie.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Simple past tense and past participle of affine.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective closely related

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French affiné, from Old French affin, closely related, from Latin affīnis, bordering on, neighboring, related by marriage : ad-, ad- + fīnis, boundary.]

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Examples

  • And, on the other hand, it is even more closely affined to the skulls of certain ancient people who inhabited Denmark during the ‘stone period,’ and were probably either contemporaneous with, or later than, the makers of the ‘refuse heaps,’ or

    Essays 2007

  • Thus these two fascicles each do double duty: The Wu section incorporates material that in other histories is found in the sections on the imperially affined families, whereas the Shu section includes the entries normally found in a section devoted to younger sons of the imperial line.

    Empresses and Consorts 1999

  • It is called a _ludus_ (or play), and is believed to have been affined to the ecclesiastical mummeries so popular in the Middle Ages, in one of which the characters were a bishop, an abbot, a preceptor, and a fool shaved the precentor on a public stage erected at the west end of the church.

    The Customs of Old England

  • Is there, then, any explanation of that vision more rational than that the spirit thus closely affined with my own was enabled, through its innate potencies, or through some agency of which we are ignorant, to impress upon my bodily perceptions its uncontrollable emotions?

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 57, July, 1862 Various

  • Hence in Roman law affinity arising from a valid marriage, whether consummated or not, constituted a diriment impediment between the affined in all degrees throughout the direct line, and to the second degree (civil method of computing) in the indirect or oblique line.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 12: Philip II-Reuss 1840-1916 1913

  • Truly affined mates would have remained faithful to each other as long as life lasted.

    Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 Sex in Relation to Society Havelock Ellis 1899

  • That the one affined soul he had ever met was lost to him through his marriage returned upon him with cruel persistency, till, unable to bear it longer, he again rushed for distraction to the real Christminster life.

    Jude the Obscure 1896

  • That the one affined soul he had ever met was lost to him through his marriage returned upon him with cruel persistency, till, unable to bear it longer, he again rushed for distraction to the real Christminster life.

    Jude the Obscure 1894

  • As to Gabriel, during a large portion of his splendid youth he exhibited a genial breadth of front that affined him to Shakespeare and Walter Scott.

    Old Familiar Faces Theodore Watts-Dunton 1873

  • Day by day I had come to realise how closely, though the main current of my blood was English, I was affined to the strange and mysterious people among whom I was now thrown -- the only people in these islands, as it seemed to me, who would be able to understand a love-passion like mine.

    Aylwin Theodore Watts-Dunton 1873

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