Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Knowledge; information.
  • noun Education; in the plural, manners.
  • noun One's friends or relatives collectively: now obsolete, except in the phrase kith and kin, one's own people and kindred.
  • noun One's native land; home; country.

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

  • noun Acquaintance; kindred.
  • noun kindred more or less remote.

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

  • noun obsolete friends and acquaintances

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

  • noun your friends and acquaintances

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English kith ("kinsmen, relations"), from Old English cȳþþ, cȳþþu ("kinship, kinsfolk, relations"), from Proto-Germanic *kunþiþō (“knowledge, acquaintance”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵenǝ-, *ǵnō- (“to know”). Cognate with Old High German kundida ("kith"), kundī ("knowledge"), Gothic 𐌺𐌿𐌽𐌸𐌹 (kunþi, "knowledge"). More at couth, -th.

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Examples

  • I will ask what we may teach one another about what we might do today and tomorrow not to repeat the bloody relationship that gave birth to Fort Hare and a South African Berlin, and gave birth to common reference points that we should all visit to understand what they did, whom we call kith and kin.

    ANC Daily News Briefing 2003

  • I will ask what we may teach one another about what we might do today and tomorrow not to repeat the bloody relationship that gave birth to Fort Hare and a South African Berlin, and gave birth to common reference points that we should all visit to understand what they did, whom we call kith and kin.

    Address at the Opening of the Tourism Indaba 2003

  • In an organization his kith are the key players or middle managers.

    ANC Today 2007

  • In an organization his kith are the key players or middle managers.

    ANC Today 2007

  • I just mention this, in case any of you out there are blessed with the kind of kith and kin susceptible to suggestions for good gifts to give a writer for any major holiday that might be coming up.

    Author! Author! » 2007 » November 2007

  • They acknowledge and make themselves accountable to sober kith-or the cocoon of caring people who surround them (for more information about "kith").

    wikiHow - New Pages [en] Doctormox 2010

  • Our word "kith," in the proverb "kith and kin," means persons of our acquaintance.] [Footnote 355: Bib.

    Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 Memoirs of Henry the Fifth James Endell Tyler 1820

  • Nor to the Soviet Empire that we faced down patiently over half a century, nor to the great British Empire from which we broke free in a long and taxing struggle that affords a better picture of our kith and kin than any the world may have today of who we are and of what we are capable.

    The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page: Sept. 12, 2001 2011

  • I hope you enjoy it with kith, kin and of course the WPIX Yule Log.

    WPIX Yule Log - The Retroist 2009

  • God bless America, and all who lost kin or kith on Sept. 11, 2001.

    Robin Koerner: A Decade After 9/11: Time to Choose to be America Again? Robin Koerner 2011

Comments

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  • "Amos liked to have his kith about him". Stella Gibbons Cold Comfort Farm

    February 18, 2013

  • 2016 internet eye dialect of 'kiss'.

    "now kith"

    June 7, 2016