Kind /(kīnd)/

Kind

a.
  1. Characteristic of the species; belonging to one's nature; natural; native. [Obs.]
    It becometh sweeter than it should be, and loseth the kind taste.
  2. Having feelings befitting our common nature; congenial; sympathetic; as, a kind man; a kind heart.
    Yet was he kind, or if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was his fault.
  3. Showing tenderness or goodness; disposed to do good and confer happiness; averse to hurting or paining; benevolent; benignant; gracious.
    He is kind unto the unthankful and to evil.
    — Luke vi 35.
    O cruel Death, to those you take more kind Than to the wretched mortals left behind.
    A fellow feeling makes one wondrous kind.
    — Garrick.
  4. Proceeding from, or characterized by, goodness, gentleness, or benevolence; as, a kind act.
  5. Gentle; tractable; easily governed; as, a horse kind in harness.

Kind

n.
  1. Nature; natural instinct or disposition. [Obs.]
    He knew by kind and by no other lore.
    Some of you, on pure instinct of nature, Are led by kind t'admire your fellow-creature.
  2. Race; genus; species; generic class; as, in mankind or humankind.
    Every kind of beasts, and of birds.
    — James iii.7.
    She follows the law of her kind.
    Here to sow the seed of bread, That man and all the kinds be fed.
  3. Sort; type; class; nature; style; character; fashion; manner; variety; description; as, there are several kinds of eloquence, of style, and of music; many kinds of government; various kinds of soil, etc.
    How diversely Love doth his pageants play, And snows his power in variable kinds !
    There is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.
    — I Cor. xv. 39.
    Diogenes was asked in a kind of scorn: What was the matter that philosophers haunted rich men, and not rich men philosophers?
    Tax on tillage was often levied in kind upon corn.

Phrases & Compounds

A kind of
something belonging to the class of; something like to; -- said loosely or slightingly.
In kind
in the produce or designated commodity itself, as distinguished from its value in money.

Kind

v. t.
  1. To beget. [Obs.]