Consanguinity

//kɒnsaŋˈɡwɪnɪti// noun

noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A consanguineous or family relationship through parentage or descent. A blood relationship. countable, uncountable

    "1776, United States Declaration of Independence They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity."

  2. 2
    (anthropology) the condition of being related by blood wordnet
  3. 3
    Inbreeding countable, uncountable

    "The Mongrel Virginians was similar to other eugenic family studies in its method and mode of argumentation, but its intensive focus on "race mixing," rather than consanguinity, represents a marked departure from the previous studies."

Synonyms

All synonyms
cognationaffiliationaffinityagnationallianceancestry

Example

More examples

"Their degrees of consanguinity and alliance are very strange; for being thus akin and allied to one another, we found that none was either father or mother, brother or sister, uncle or aunt, nephew or niece, son-in-law or daughter-in-law, godfather or godmother, to the other; unless, truly, a tall flat-nosed old fellow, who, as I perceived, called a little shitten-arsed girl of three or four years old, father, and the child called him daughter."

Etymology

From Middle English consanguinytee, consanguinite, consanguinyte, from Old French consanguinité and Latin cōnsanguinitātem, accusative of Latin cōnsanguinitās, from cōnsanguineus, from Latin com- (“together”) + sanguineus (“of or pertaining to blood”), from Latin sanguis (“blood”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.