Kind Meaning
/kaɪnd/Definition, CEFR level A1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
nounA type, race or category; a group of entities that have common characteristics such that they may be grouped together.
nounA makeshift or otherwise atypical specimen.
Sentence Examples
I can't live that kind of life.
You were kind to help me.
A very kind and helpful person
CEFR Practice Quiz
The old woman was very ____ and helped the young lost child.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
It was very ____ of you to help me with my heavy luggage when I arrived at the station today.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English kynde, kinde, from Old English cynd, ġecynd (“inherent nature, disposition, kind, gender, generation, race”), from Proto-West Germanic *kundi, from Proto-Germanic *kinþiz, related to Proto-Germanic *kunją (“race, kin”) and Old English cennan (“to bear, give birth”). Cognate with Old High German gikunt (“nature, kind”), Icelandic kind (“race, species, kind”). Doublet of gens, genesis, and jati. See also kin.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"How diversely Love doth his pageants play, / And shews his powre in variable kinds !"
— 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 1:
"“[…] the awfully hearty sort of Christmas cards that people do send to other people that they don't know at all well. You know. The kind that have mottoes like
Here's rattling good luck and roaring good cheer, / With lashings of food and great hogsheads of beer. […]”"
— 1921, Ben Travers, chapter 1, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC:
"That in virtue of which all of his material parts are of the same kind human being is what makes those parts belong to Hook, but Hook is neither identical with his kind (the essence of human being), nor is Hook merely that which makes him a member of the kind or all his parts human (his soul)."
— 2022, James Dominic Rooney, Material Objects in Confucian and Aristotelian Metaphysics, page 166:
"I got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick woods. I made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things under so the rain couldn't get at them."
— 1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter VIII, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC:
"Must yt nedes folowe that theyr fayth was chaunged in kynde, bycause yt was augmented in degrees."
— 1533, Thomas More, The second parte of the confutacion of Tyndals answere in whyche is also confuted the chyrche that Tyndale deuyseth:
Explore More A1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The old woman was very ____ and helped the young lost child.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
It was very ____ of you to help me with my heavy luggage when I arrived at the station today.