

Nov 17, 2011 This week's theme

Words with unusual arrangements of letters



This week's words

verisimilitude

syzygy

yob

kine

spendthrift



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kine PRONUNCIATION: (kyn)

MEANING: noun: A plural of cow.

ETYMOLOGY: From Middle English kyn, from Old English cyna, a plural of cu (cow). Earliest documented use: 1598.

NOTES: Kine is one of the very few words in English (other examples: I/we, me/us) that have no letters in common with its singular form, cow. It is pluralized using the -n marker, as in the words children, brethren, and oxen.

USAGE: "Cows stood belly deep in a ranch pond, doing their impersonation of the kine in John Constable's paintings."

Verlyn Klinkenborg; Water and Grasses; The New York Times; Jul 5, 2010.

See more usage examples of kine in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.



A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials. -Lin Yutang, writer and translator (1895-1976)





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