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 Relationships (Outline) |
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A cousin is a relative that is the child of a parent's sibling; this is more specifically referred to as a first cousin.
More generally, in the kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a cousin is a type of relationship in which relatives are two or more generations away from their most recent common ancestor. For this definition degrees and removals are used to further specify the relationship.
Degree measures how distant the relationship is from the most recent common ancestor(s). If the cousins do not come from the same generation, removal is specified, as removal measures the difference in generations between the two cousins. When the removal is not specified, no removal is assumed.[1][2]
Various governmental entities have established systems for legal use that can precisely specify kinship with common ancestors any number of generations in the past; for example, in medicine and in law, a first cousin is a type of third-degree relative.[citation needed]
- ^ King, Robert C.; Stansfield, William D. (2013). "Cousin". A Dictionary of Genetics. Oxford University Press. 8.
- ^ "Cousin Definition & Meaning". Merriam-Webster.