first cousin
noun
Simple meaning
A child of a parent's sibling.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
furstkuhzuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈfɝstˈkʌzən
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A child of a parent's sibling; a nephew or niece of a parent; a child of one's uncle or aunt.
A relative who has with the other person only two grandparents or one grandparent (maternal or paternal) in common, but parents are different.
figurativeby extension
Anything closely related.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A child of a parent's sibling; a nephew or niece of a parent; a child of one's uncle or aunt.
Used this way, first cousin is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in family or home contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Family/home
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.