Word.ws English Dictionary

forty-second cousin

forty-second cousin noun: any very distant relative.

Noun

forty-second cousin (plural forty-second cousins)

  1. (humorous) Any very distant relative.
    • And also my step-sister, my niece, my fourth cousin, my thirty-third cousin, my forty-second cousin, my great-aunt, my grandmother, my widowed sister-in-law-and next week she will be my wife.1879, Mark Twain, The Great Revolution in Pitcairn
    • "Is he a relation of ours, too, Cousin Jimmy?"
      "Forty-second cousin. Way back he had a cousin of Mary Shipley's for a great-something. […]1923, Lucy Maud Montgomery, “Chapter 7”, in Emily of New Moon

Forms of forty-second cousin

pluralforty-second cousins

Questions about forty-second cousin

What does forty-second cousin mean?
Forty-second cousin means any very distant relative.
What part of speech is forty-second cousin?
Forty-second cousin is a noun.
What is the plural of forty-second cousin?
The plural of forty-second cousin is forty-second cousins.

Words near forty-second cousin in the dictionary

  1. forty-ninths
  2. forty-one
  3. forty-oneth
  4. forty-rod
  5. forty-second
  6. forty-second cousin
  7. forty-second cousins
  8. forty-seconds
  9. forty-secondth
  10. forty-seven
  11. forty-seventh

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: forty-second cousin (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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