Word.ws English Dictionary

fictive kin

Syllables: fic·tive kin/ˈfɪktɪv kɪn/

fictive kin noun: someone who, though unrelated by birth or marriage, has such a close emotional relationship with another that they may be considered part of the family.

Noun

fictive kin (countable and uncountable, plural fictive kin or fictive kins)

  1. Someone who, though unrelated by birth or marriage, has such a close emotional relationship with another that they may be considered part of the family.
    • Ebaugh (2000) described three types of fictive kin (family-type) relationships, based not on blood or marriage, but rather on religious rituals or close friendship ties, that constitutes a type of social capital which many immigrants bring with them that facilitates their adjustment to the host...2005, John G. Bruhn, The Sociology of Community Connections, New York, N.Y.: Springer Science+Business Media, →ISBN, page 59
    • Most studies indicate that Black family members live in proximity, in part an outcome of segregated communities. These close-knit communities helped to produce strong fictive kin relations with neighbors and fellow church members, which in turn provided support in the face of discrimination from...2006, Roberta L. Coles, “African American Families”, in Race & Family: A Structural Approach, Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, →ISBN, page 166

Examples of fictive kin in a sentence

  • In the socialist era […] [t]he custom of making fictive kin became less popular or went underground.2007, Xiyi Huang, “Network of Social Relationships in Resource Distribution”, in Power, Entitlement and Social Practice: Resource...
  • Attaining fictive kin status requires that a person have prolonged physical proximity to a family member in order to develop a relationship that is both interdependent and mutually beneficial.2011, Constance Dallas, “Fictive Kin Relationships”, in Martha Craft-Rosenberg, Shelley-Rae Pehler, editors, Encyclopedia of Family Health...

Forms of fictive kin

pluralfictive kin
pluralfictive kins

Questions about fictive kin

What does fictive kin mean?
Fictive kin means someone who, though unrelated by birth or marriage, has such a close emotional relationship with another that they may be considered part of the family.
How do you use fictive kin in a sentence?
In the socialist era […] [t]he custom of making fictive kin became less popular or went underground.
What part of speech is fictive kin?
Fictive kin is a noun.
How do you pronounce fictive kin?
Fictive kin is pronounced /ˈfɪktɪv kɪn/ (UK).
What is the plural of fictive kin?
The plural of fictive kin is fictive kin.

Words near fictive kin in the dictionary

  1. fictitious person
  2. fictitious persons
  3. fictitiously
  4. fictitiousness
  5. fictive
  6. fictive kin
  7. fictively
  8. fictiveness
  9. fictives
  10. fictivity
  11. fictlang

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fictive kin (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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