Kin, Kind

“King. But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son—

Ham. A little more than kin, and less than kind.”

Kin or kinsman is a relative by marriage or blood more distant than father and son.

Kind means of the same sort of genus, as man-kind or man-genus.

Hamlet says he is more than kin to Claudius (as he was step-son), but still he is not of the same kind, the same class. He is not a bird of the same feather as the king.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.