Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Archaic A plural of cow1.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Plural of cow.
- n. A weasel.
- n. In physical, the c. g. s. unit of velocity. Since in the c. g. s. system the units of distance and time are the centimeter and second, respectively, the kine is a velocity of one centimeter per second.
Wiktionary
- n. Plural form of cow.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Cows.
WordNet 3.0
- n. domesticated bovine animals as a group regardless of sex or age
Etymologies
- Middle English kyn, from Old English cȳna, genitive pl. of cū, cow; see cow1.
Examples
“When she rocks in its cradle the babe the young parents intrust to her heed; when she calls the kine to the milking, the chicks to their corn; when she but flits through my room to renew the flowers on the stand, or range in neat order the books that I read, no spell on her fancy could lead her a step from the range of her provident cares!”
“The same are also called the congregation of bulls (from their rage against the Church) who assemble together all their kine, that is, the people their subjects, to exclude if they can, from Christ and his inheritance, his constant confessors, who are like silver tried by fire.”
The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Book 21: Psalms The Challoner Revision
“The sacred and high pre-eminence and glory of kine, that is capable of cleansing one from every sin, has, O chief of men, been thus explained to thee.”
The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 Books 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18
“Those men who make gift of Kapila king with their calves and with vessel of white brass for milking them, -- kine, that is, which are not vicious and which while given away, are wrapped round with cloths, -- succeed in conquering both this and the other world.”
The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 Books 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18
“The true scientist may perhaps prefer that his kine should be the fat kine -- for he is but human -- but he does not desire them to be the only kine and to eat up all the rest.”
“The air grew full of silence, the birds twittered sleepily, and from afar came, faint and clear, the musical song of the milkmaid calling the kine home to the milking.”
“It is the animals that lack the upper teeth that ruminate, such as kine, sheep, and goats.”
“This ordinance lays down that the Dakshina should be a hundred thousand animals such as kine or horses.”
The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12
“The considerations of deserving recipients, of time, of the kind of kine, and of the ritual to be observed, should be attended to.”
The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 Books 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18
“There are considerations of propriety or otherwise about the person unto whom kine should be given, the time for making those gifts, the kind of kine that should form the object of gifts, and the rites that should be observed in making the gifts.”
The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 Books 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘kine’.
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Very Silly Words
A list of very silly sounding words, as well as words that are fun to say
badot, gardyloo, dingbat, gaffer, kine, haberdashery, forsooth, whey-faced, hoddypeak, brouhaha, widdershins, decemnovenarianize and 115 more...
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Cattle
cattle, cow, beef, steer, heifer, calf, bull, cattle call, Black Angus, Hereford, Holstein, Dwarf Lulu and 376 more...
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strange plurals
words with unusual plurals - singular form being the plural form, obsolete formations without 's', etc.
shoon, crocket, crotchet, quare, aëtheogamous, binoculars, antelope, luggage, police, furniture, aircraft, macaroni and 31 more...
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Dash's list
Words of interest.
cacogen, fricatrice, destrier, swoon, multiverse, haggard, entranced, entheogen, passionate, ascendant, conciliator, bandylegged and 34 more...
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Ecology
apishamore, argonaut, latent, unbacked, dichotomy, noctilucent, assoil, animalcule, succinct, vespertine, crozzle, vermilion and 13 more...
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Tolkien's archaisms
sigaldry, moot, kine, fey, eyot, ghylls, gangrel, glede, ilexes, laved, niggard, league and 44 more...
CheriRD I find the definition of 'weasel' curious -- does anyone know how that came about? or have an example of its use? Nov 17, 2011
hernesheir cruggles: "a disease of young kine". --Dr. Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary and Supplement, 1841. Jun 1, 2011
qroqqa Actually the pronouns mine and thine do, but kine doesn't. The -ine is the Germanic form of the adjective ending more familiar from Latin-derived equine, porcine, etc. Greek also had it*; crystalline is the only English inheritance of this that I can recall.
Kine on the other hand is a double plural: first by umlaut alone, [ku:] becoming [ky:], then picking up the -n plural.
* Hm, apparently the -i- was short here, so perhaps not the same ending after all. Jun 1, 2011
ruzuzu Are there any others that follow the same pattern as swine? Jun 1, 2011
bilby "About him was a four-cornered cloth of purple, and an apple of gold was at each corner, and every one of the apples was of the value of an hundred kine. And there was precious gold of the value of three hundred kine upon his shoes, and upon his stirrups, from his knee to the tip of his toe."
- Thomas Bulfinch, 'Age of Fable'. Sep 19, 2009
yarb The kine are all dead and under 7 cubits
of snow. The antlery tribes are stuck numb in drifts.
Your duds freeze stiff as you stand by the elm log blaze.
Brazen knick-knacks from Brum burst asunder with cold.
Icicles crackle in uncombed hairies' beavers.
It's really really rotten to be Rhyphaean.
Oenophiles give you Grands Cru by weight, not volume,
cleaving the frozen Lafite with their tomahawks.
- Peter Reading, Englished (iii. 349-83), from Diplopic, 1983 Jun 30, 2008
bilby "Thus the cows create their own shade and food; and the tree, its hour-glass being inverted, lives a second life, as it were. It is an important question with some nowadays, whether you should trim young apple-trees as high as your nose or as high as your eyes. The ox trims them up as high as he can reach, and that is about the right height, I think. In spite of wandering kine and other adverse circumstance, that despised shrub, valued only by small birds as a covert and shelter from hawks, has its blossom-week at last, and in course of time its harvest, sincere, though small."
- Henry David Thoreau, 'Wild Apples'. Dec 13, 2007
uselessness Assuming that Hawaiian version is pronounced "kee nay"? Aug 10, 2007
oroboros "Da kine" is Hawaiian slang for "the best," "top flight," "creme de la creme" etc. Aug 10, 2007
uselessness Bizarre. I've never heard that before. Kine? Crazy. Aug 10, 2007
seanahan This follows the same pattern as swine. Aug 10, 2007
evin290 The only plural in the Enlgish language which doesn't share a single letter with its sigular form. :) (Plural for cow, by the way, Archaically.) Aug 9, 2007