king

See also: King

English

King Henry V of England.

The white and black kings (chess)

A king piece in shogi. Sometimes just 王.

Alternative forms

kyng, kynge (archaic)
kinge (obsolete)

Pronunciation

enPR: kĭng, IPA^(key): /kɪŋ/
(US, pre-/ŋ/ tensing), IPA^(key): /kiŋ/
Audio (US) (file)
Audio (UK) (file)
Rhymes: -ɪŋ

Etymology 1

From Middle English king, kyng, from Old English cyng, cyning (“king”), from Proto-West Germanic *kuning, from Proto-Germanic *kuningaz, *kunungaz (“king”), equivalent to kin +‎ -ing. Doublet of cyning.

Cognate with Scots keeng (“king”), North Frisian köning (“king”), West Frisian kening (“king”), Dutch koning (“king”), Low German Koning, Köning (“king”), German König (“king”), Danish konge (“king”), Norwegian konge, Swedish konung, kung (“king”), Icelandic konungur, kóngur (“king”), Polish ksiądz (“priest”), Russian князь (knjazʹ, “prince”), Old Church Slavonic кънѧѕь (kŭnędzĭ), Romanian chinez, Finnish kuningas (“king”), Estonian kuningas, Ingrian kunigas, Karelian kuninkas, Livvi kuńingas, Ludian kuńingas, Veps kuningaz, Võro kuning and Votic kunikaz. Eclipsed non-native Middle English roy (“king”) (Early Modern English roy), borrowed from Old French roi, rei, rai (“king”).

Noun

king (plural kings)

A male monarch; a man who heads a monarchy. If it is an absolute monarchy, then he is the supreme ruler of his nation.
Henry VIII was the king of England from 1509 to 1547.
A powerful or majorly influential person.
Howard Stern styled himself as the "king of all media".
- 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter I, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, OCLC 24962326:
  "I wish we were back in Tenth Street. But so many children came […] and the Tenth Street house wasn't half big enough; and a dreadful speculative builder built this house and persuaded Austin to buy it. Oh, dear, and here we are among the rich and great; and the steel kings and copper kings and oil kings and their heirs and dauphins. […]"
- 2014 June 21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8892:
  The truth is that [Isaac] Newton was very much a product of his time. The colossus of science was not the first king of reason, Keynes wrote after reading Newton’s unpublished manuscripts. Instead “he was the last of the magicians”.
(countable or uncountable) Something that has a preeminent position.
In times of financial panic, cash is king.
- 2012 June 3, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Mr. Plow” (season 4, episode 9; originally aired 11/19/1992)”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name):
  It would be difficult, for example, to imagine a bigger, more obvious subject for comedy than the laughable self-delusion of washed-up celebrities, especially if the washed-up celebrity in question is Adam West, a camp icon who can go toe to toe with William Shatner as the king of winking self-parody.
A component of certain games.
1. (chess) The principal chess piece, that players seek to threaten with unavoidable capture to result in a victory by checkmate. It is often the tallest piece, with a symbolic crown with a cross at the top.
2. (card games) A playing card with the letter "K" and the image of a king on it, the thirteenth card in a given suit.
3. A checker (a piece of checkers/draughts) that reached the farthest row forward, thus becoming crowned (either by turning it upside-down, or by stacking another checker on it) and gaining more freedom of movement.
4. The central pin or skittle in bowling games.
  - 1878, John Henry Walsh, British Rural Sports (page 712)
    In knockemdowns and bowls ten pins are used, the centre one being called the king, and the ball has to be grounded before it reaches the frame.
(UK, slang) A king skin.
Oi mate, have you got kings?
A male dragonfly; a drake.
A king-sized bed.
- 2002, Scott W. Donkin, Gerard Meyer, Peak Performance: Body and Mind (page 119)
  Try asking for a king-size bed next time because kings are usually firmer.
The monarch with the most power and authority in a monarchy, regardless of sex.
- 1891 January 3, ““King” Wilhelmina”, in The Chicago Daily Tribune, volume LI, number III, Chicago, Ill., page 5, column 7:
  The British Parliament has had made it for it in the past the claim that it could do anything excepting convert a woman into a man. […] And the high court [of Amsterdam] has done it by deciding that all officials and public servants shall take their oath of allegiance not to Queen Wilhelmina but to King Wilhelmina.
- 2009, Charlotte Booth, “Hatshepsut”, in The Curse of the Mummy and Other Mysteries of Ancient Egypt, Oneworld Publications, →ISBN, page 93:
  Hatshepsut was ruling as a king, not queen and she needed to be recognised as such.
- 2011, Nwando Achebe, “Mgbapu Ahebi: Exile in Igalaland, ca. 1895–1916”, in The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe, Bloomington, Ind.; Indianapolis, Ind.: Indiana University Press, →ISBN, pages 63–64:
  The act of perforating one’s ears could be read as a gendering performance—a modification from an overt masculinity (king) to a tempered female masculinity (king with female traits)—in which the male king was expected to adopt the quintessence of Omeppa’s female king wife, Ebulejonu, and by so doing, embody the true essence of womanhood. […] Attah-Ebulejonu, like Hatshepsut of Egypt before her, ruled as (and was remembered as) a king, not queen, perhaps setting the precedent for the coronation of another female king, Ahebi Ugbabe, about four centuries later. […] This time, the female king would not rule in the Igala kingdom nor would she be of Igala origin. Instead, the king would be an Igbo woman who had lived in Igalaland for many years, who had come of age and matured there and in the process had imbibed the cultural values and mores of the people with whom she had lived in exile.
(graph theory) A vertex in a directed graph which can reach every other vertex via a path with a length of at most 2.

Synonyms

Rex (the reigning king, formal), roy (obsolete, formal)

Coordinate terms

(monarch): caesar, emperor, empress, kaiser, maharajah, prince, princess, queen, regent, royalty, shah, tsar, viceroy
(playing card): ace, jack, joker, queen

Derived terms

a cat can look at a king
a cat may look at a king
bean king
blue king crab
brown king crab
California king
Charlton Kings
chicken à la king
chicken à la King
Chilean king crab
complain king
drag king
dragonking
drama king
erl-king
every king needs a queen
fit for a king
foreking
god king
god-king
God Save the King
golden king crab
good-king-henry
Good King Henry
high-king
high king
Homecoming King
in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
kettle king
King and Queen County
King and Queen Court House
King Arthur
king-at-arms
King Billy
king brown
king cab
king cake
king card
King Charles Land
King Charles's head
King Charles spaniel
king cheetah
king cobra
King Cotton
king-count
King Country
king crab
king cricket
king crow
King David's harp
kingdom
King Edward
king eider
King George
King George County
King George whiting
king-hell
king hit
king-hit
kinghood
Kingian
King James Bible
King James Version
King Kong
kinglet
King Mob
king of all one surveys
king-of-arms
king of arms
king of beasts
king of birds
king of clubs
king of diamonds
king of hearts
king of herrings
king of insects
King of Kings
king of kings
king of metals
king of six
king of spades
king of spices
king of the castle
king of the doos
king of the forest
king of the hill
king of the mountains
king oyster mushroom
king pair
king parrot
king penguin
king post
king prawn
king rail
King Salmon
Kingsbury
King's Cliffe
King's Counsel
Kings County
King's Cross
King's Dyke
King's English
king's evil
Kings Heath
kingship
king shit of fuck mountain
King Shit of Turd Island
kingside
king size
king-size
king-sized
king skin
king's knight's pawn
Kings Langley
kingslayer
King's Lynn
king snake
Kings Norton, King's Norton
King's Nympton
King's Park
king's pawn
king's ransom
king's rook's pawn
King's shilling
King's Sutton, Kings Sutton
Kingston
Kingstown
Kingstree
Kings Worthy
king tide
king trumpet mushroom
king vulture
King William
King William County
live like a king
make-king
New Zealand king shag
palm king
pearly king
philosopher king
priest-king
prom king
pumpking
rat king
red king crab
rice king
sea king
shepherd king
snail king
sofa king
southern king crab
suicide king
Tchang-king
who died and made you king
woman king

Descendants

Tok Pisin: king
⇒ American Sign Language: K@Shoulder K@Abdomen
→ Burmese: ကင် (kang)
→ Isubu: kinge
→ Japanese: キング (kingu)
→ Korean: 킹 (king)
→ Maori: kingi
→ Marshallese: kiin̄
→ Thai: คิง (king)

Translations

See king/translations § Noun.

Verb

king (third-person singular simple present kings, present participle kinging, simple past and past participle kinged)

To crown king, to make (a person) king.
- 1982, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, South Atlantic Review, Volume 47, page 16,
  The kinging of Macbeth is the business of the first part of the play […] .
- 2008, William Shakespeare, A. R. Braunmuller (editor), Macbeth, Introduction, page 24,
  One narrative is the kinging and unkinging of Macbeth; the other narrative is the attack on Banquo's line and that line's eventual accession and supposed Jacobean survival through Malcolm's successful counter-attack on Macbeth.
To rule over as king.
- 1599, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act II, scene iv]:
  And let us do it with no show of fear; / No, with no more than if we heard that England / Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance; / For, my good liege, she is so idly king’d, / Her sceptre so fantastically borne / By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth, / That fear attends her not.
To perform the duties of a king.
- 1918, Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, The Railroad Trainman, Volume 35, page 675,
  He had to do all his kinging after supper, which left him no time for roystering with the nobility and certain others.
- 2001, Chip R. Bell, Managers as Mentors: Building Partnerships for Learning, page 6,
  Second, Mentor (the old man) combined the wisdom of experience with the sensitivity of a fawn in his attempts to convey kinging skills to young Telemachus.
To assume or pretend preeminence (over); to lord it over.
- 1917, Edna Ferber, Fanny Herself, page 32,
  The seating arrangement of the temple was the Almanach de Gotha of Congregation Emanu-el. Old Ben Reitman, patriarch among the Jewish settlers of Winnebago, who had come over an immigrant youth, and who now owned hundreds of rich farm acres, besides houses, mills and banks, kinged it from the front seat of the center section.
To promote a piece of draughts/checkers that has traversed the board to the opposite side, that piece subsequently being permitted to move backwards as well as forwards.
- 1957, Bertram Vivian Bowden (editor), Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines, page 302,
  If the machine does this, it will lose only one point, and as it is not looking far enough ahead, it cannot see that it has not prevented its opponent from kinging but only postponed the evil day.
- 1986, Rick DeMarinis, The Burning Women of Far Cry, page 100,
  I was about to make a move that would corner a piece that she was trying to get kinged, but I slid my checker back […] .
To dress and perform as a drag king.
- 2008, Audrey Yue, King Victoria: Asian Drag Kings, Postcolonial Female Masculinity, and Hybrid Sexuality in Australia, in Fran Martin, Peter Jackson, Audrey Yue, Mark McLelland (editors), AsiaPacifQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities, page 266,
  Through the ex-centric diaspora, kinging in postcolonial Australia has become a site of critical hybridity where diasporic female masculinities have emerged through the contestations of "home" and "host" cultures.

Translations

in checkers

Catalan: coronar (ca)
Galician: coroar (gl)
Hungarian: király (hu) sg
Italian: fare dama
Romanian: încorona (ro)
Spanish: coronar (es)

Noun

king (plural kings)

Alternative form of qing (Chinese musical instrument)

Anagrams

gink

Estonian

Etymology

From Proto-Finnic *kenkä. Cognate with Finnish kenkä.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /ˈkinɡ̊/, [ˈkiŋɡ̊]

Noun

king (genitive kinga, partitive kinga)

shoe

Declension

Declension of king (type külm)

	singular	plural
nominative	king	kingad
genitive	kinga	kingade
partitive	kinga	kingi / kingasid
illative	kinga / kingasse	kingadesse / kingisse
inessive	kingas	kingades / kingis
elative	kingast	kingadest / kingist
allative	kingale	kingadele / kingile
adessive	kingal	kingadel / kingil
ablative	kingalt	kingadelt / kingilt
translative	kingaks	kingadeks / kingiks
terminative	kingani	kingadeni
essive	kingana	kingadena
abessive	kingata	kingadeta
comitative	kingaga	kingadega

Quotations

Kapampangan

Alternative forms

keng
qng, queng, quing (Spanish variant)

Preposition

king

indirect object marker; of, to, at, on, in, into, onto, among, around, for

Manx

Noun

king m

inflection of kione:
1. genitive singular
2. nominative plural

Mutation

Manx mutation
Radical	Lenition	Eclipsis
king	ching	ging
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

Middle English

Alternative forms

kenin, kening, kinig (in compounds, toponymic)
gug, kug (in compounds, influenced by Old Norse (see etymology))
knyng (transmission error)
chinge, chinȝ, cing, cining, cinȝ, ging, keing, keng, kingk, kingue, kining, kink, kyng, kynge

Etymology

Inherited from the Old English cyning, from Proto-West Germanic *kuning, from Proto-Germanic *kuningaz. The forms kug (attested in the compounds kugdom, kuglond, and kugriche) and gug (attested in the compound guglond) show the influence of the Old Norse konungr, whence they borrow their root vowel. The early forms featuring syncope (chinge, chinȝ, cing, and cinȝ) may have long ī.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /kinɡ/, [kiŋɡ]

Noun

king (nominative plural kinges, also the early forms kingas or kingæs)

king (monarch)
king (chess piece)

Derived terms

Kinges
kinges of Coloin
kingles
kingly
king of kinges
Kingpleie
kingriche

Descendants

English: king (see there for further descendants)
Scots: keeng, king
Yola: kinge, king

References

“king, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Tok Pisin

Etymology

From English king.

Noun

king

king

Yola

Noun

king

Alternative form of kinge
- 1867, “THE WEDDEEN O BALLYMORE”, in SONGS, ETC. IN THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY, number 5:
  Earch myde was a queen, an earch bye was a king;
  Each maid was a queen, and each boy was a king;

References

Jacob Poole (1867), William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, page 96