Definition of kissing cousin in US English:

noun

• 1A relative known well enough to be greeted with a kiss.

  Example sentences

  • ‘Innovation and entrepreneurship may not be perfect synonyms, but semantically the two are at least kissing cousins.’
  • ‘I need all the support I can get to show Magick and Quantum Physics are kissing cousins…’
  • ‘As any woman who's been pregnant knows, the uterus and the bladder are kissing cousins inside your abdomen.’
  • ‘That is not to say that the parts are interchangeable, for they are not, but they are surely kissing cousins.’
  • ‘All of it going to kissing cousins of those who had to approve the deal.’
  • ‘Pharmacologically, caffeine is a kissing cousin of theophylline, and in high doses it can produce sympathomimetic effects.’
  • ‘To me it sounds like we're all stupid, helpless idiots, no different from our kissing cousins, the chimpanzees, trying to learn the Pythagorean theorem.’
  • ‘Outsourcing and shared services have always been related, but the Web promises to make them kissing cousins.’
  • ‘For rank-and-file Democrats, reformers and Republicans were kissing cousins.’
  • ‘For one thing, none of the 10 shorthaired breeds in existence in the late 1960s looked anything like the Persian's kissing cousin.’
  • ‘Now my hair is short, a kissing cousin to a bob (less formal angles), and it's choppy and almost punk rock looking.’
  • ‘Trial lawyers and MTV are bastions of liberalism and, therefore, kissing cousins.’
  • ‘Philip realizes that ‘It can be said - has been said - that I write the kind of poetry that can be described as language poetry - kissing cousins with it at least’.’
  • ‘Yet another kissing cousin of the socialist Progressive Challenge is the Congressional Progressive Caucus.’
  • ‘Uncle Sam's nephews were hardly kissing cousins, and the contrast with the happy family who were the European side was more than marked.’

  1. 1.1 Something that is of a very similar character to another thing of the same type.
     ‘beneath the surface, gospel music and the blues are kissing cousins’