Obs. Forms: 4 cusynage, 4–5 cosynage, 4–8 (9) cosin-, 6 cosen-, cousen-, -yn-, (coossin-, cozinn-), 7 cousinage, cozenage. [a. F. cousinage (13th c.): see -AGE.]
1. The condition of being ‘cousins’; kinship, consanguinity.
1375. Barbour, Bruce, V. 135. A lady … That wes till him in neir degre Of cosynage.
c. 1400. Apol. Loll., 79. If þat a man wed in to wif … a cosyn of his … after þis cosynage is knowen to him.
c. 1430. Lydg., Min. Poems (Percy Soc.), 36. Be wel ware of feyned cosynage.
1571. Campion, Hist. Irel., II. vii. (1633), 98. Clayming cousinage to diverse noble houses.
1579. Fulke, Heskins’ Parl., 12. By which mariages cousenage might easily be vnderstoode to growe betweene the two tribes.
1540. Act 32 Hen. VIII., c. 2 § 2. Any Assise of Mort auncestor, Cossnage, Alye.
1598. Kitchin, Courts Leet (1675), 424. Where he had view before in a Writ of Cozenage.
1628. Coke, On Litt., 157 a. If there be a Challenge for Cosinage, he that taketh the Challenge must shew how the Juror is Cousin.
1641. Termes de la Ley, 90 b. Cosinage … lyeth where my great Grandfather, my Grand-fathers Grandfather, or other Cosin dyeth seised in fee-simple, and a stranger abateth, viz. entreth into the lands, then I shall have against him this writ.
1865. Nichols, Britton, II. 61. Nor can the grandson … proceed by writ of Cosinage in the lifetime of the daughter.
c. transf. and fig.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XIII. xxix. (Tollem. MS.). Betwene fische and water is nyȝnesse of cosinage.
c. 1450. Myrc, 168. The cosynage of folowynge [= Baptism] teche.
1557. N. T. (Genev.), Luke viii. 21, note. The spiritual cousinage is to be preferred to the carnal and natural.
1565. Jewel, Repl. Harding (1611), 133. The Punicall tongue, acknowledging a likenesse and cosenage, as it were to be betweene that and the Hebrew tongue.
2. concr. Kinsfolk collectively; family, kindred.
a. 1340. Hampole, Psalter lxxiii. 9 [lxxiv. 8]. Þe cosynage of þa seyde in þaire hert … þe cusynage of þa is þe felaghship of all dampnabil men.
1382. Wyclif, Gen. xii. 3. Alle cosynages of the erthe.
c. 1470. Harding, Chron., Proem viii. Geue them in possessyon amonge the cosynage.
a. 1577. Sir T. Smith, Commw. Eng., I. xii. (1609), 16. Care to maintaine still this their cousinage and common family.
