king – English noun declension

English noun forms of king

Noun: king
Singularking
Pluralkings

Sample Sentences

  • Henry VIII was the king of England from 1509 to 1547.
  • Charles the third became the new king of England from 2022.
  • 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. [1891 January 3, ““King” Wilhelmina”, in The Chicago Daily Tribune, volume LI, number III, Chicago, Ill., page 5, column 7:]
  • Hatshepsut was ruling as a king, not queen and she needed to be recognised as such. [2009, Charlotte Booth, “Hatshepsut”, in The Curse of the Mummy and Other Mysteries of Ancient Egypt, Oneworld Publications, →ISBN, page 93:]
  • 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. [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:]
  • Old Culwaddy the ‘king’, squatting by the galley fire, looked up questioningly[.] [1937, Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, published 1947, page 56:]
  • Howard Stern styled himself as the "king of all media".
  • "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.[…]" [1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter I, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:]
  • I'd been the dodgem car king at the Brisbane Ekka in 1975 and all those skills can flooding back[.] [1995, Paul Vautin, Turn It Up!, Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, page 154:]
  • 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”. [2014 June 21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8892, archived from the original on 09 Jan 2025:]
  • In times of financial panic, cash is king.
  • 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. [2012 June 3, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Mr. Plow” (season 4, episode 9; originally aired 11/19/1992)”, in The Onion A.V. Club, archived from the original on 01 Feb 2013:]
  • I'm sure you got the job, king.
  • The objective of each player is to place the opponent’s king ‘under attack’ in such a way that the opponent has no legal move. […] If the arbiter observes both kings are in check, or a pawn stands on the rank furthest from its starting position, he/she shall wait until the next move is completed. [2022, “2023 Laws of Chess”, in FIDE, pages 2, 20:]
  • 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. [1878, John Henry Walsh, British Rural Sports, page 712:]
  • Try asking for a king-size bed next time because kings are usually firmer. [2002, Scott W. Donkin, Gerard Meyer, Peak Performance: Body and Mind, page 119:]
  • Oi mate, have you got kings?

Etymology

1. From Middle English king, kyng, kynge, from Old English cening, cing, cining, cuning, cyncg, cyneg, cyng, cyngc, cynig, cyning, king, kining, kuning, kyning, kyningc (“king”), from Proto-West Germanic *kuning, from Proto-Germanic *kuningaz, *kunungaz (“king”), from *kunją (“clan, family, kin”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵenh₁- (“to produce; to beget”). Equivalent to kin + -ing. Doublet of cyning and knez.
2. Cognates
3. Cognate with Yola king, kinge (“king”), North Frisian kining, köning (“king”), Saterland Frisian Kening, König, Köänig (“king”), West Frisian kening (“king”), Alemannic German Chüng, Künig (“king”), Bavarian Kini (“king”), Central Franconian Künning (“king”), Cimbrian khuuneg (“king”), Dutch koning (“king”), German König (“king”), Luxembourgish Kinnek (“king”), Vilamovian kyng (“king”), Yiddish קעניג (kenig), קיניג (kinig, “king”), Danish kong, konge, konning (“king”), Elfdalian kunungg (“king”), Faroese kongur (“king”), Icelandic kóngur, konungur (“king”), Norwegian Bokmål konge (“king”), Norwegian Nynorsk konge (“king”), Scanian káng (“king”), Swedish konung, kung (“king”), Latgalian and Latvian kungs (“gentlemen”), Lithuanian kunigas (“priest”), Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian князь (knjazʹ, “prince; duke”), Bulgarian кнез (knez), княз (knjaz, “prince”), Czech kněz (“priest”), kníže (“prince”), Macedonian кнез (knez, “prince”), Polish ksiądz, xiądz (“priest; prince”), Serbo-Croatian кне̑з, knȇz (“prince”), Slovak kňaz (“priest”), knieža (“prince”), Slovene knez (“prince”), Estonian and Finnish kuningas (“king”), Ingrian kunigas, kunikas, kuningas (“king”), Veps kunigaz (“king”), Votic kunikõz (“king”), Võro kuning (“king”), Inari Sami kunâgâs (“king”), Kildin Sami коа̄нгэсс (kåångess), ко̄нгэс (kōnges, “bridegroom; king”), Lule Sami and Pite Sami gånågis (“king”), Northern Sami gonagas (“king”), Skolt Sami koonǥõs (“king”), Ter Sami конагас (konâgas, “king”); also Breton genel (“to bear”), Irish and Scottish Gaelic gin (“birth; fetus; offspring”), Welsh geni (“to be born”), Latin genō (“to bear, beget; to produce, yield”), Greek γενεά (geneá), γενιά (geniá, “ancestry, kin; generation”), Albanian dhen, dhën (“caprids, small livestock”), Lithuanian žentas (“son-in-law”), Belarusian зяць (zjacʹ, “brother-in-law; son-in-law”), Bulgarian and Macedonian зет (zet, “brother-in-law; son-in-law”), Czech zeť (“son-in-law”), Polish zięć (“son-on-law”), Russian зять (zjatʹ, “brother-in-law; son-in-law”), Serbo-Croatian зе̏т, zȅt (“brother-in-law; son-in-law”), Slovak zať (“son-in-law”), Slovene zet (“son-in-law”), Ukrainian зєть (zjetʹ), зять (zjatʹ, “brother-in-law; son-in-law”), Armenian ծնել (cnel, “to bear”), Avestan 𐬰𐬄𐬚𐬀𐬭 (ząθar, “father, progenitor; Creator”), Pashto زېږېدل (zeǵedël, “to be born”), Persian زادن (zādan / zâdan), زاییدن (zāyīdan / zâyidan, “to give birth”), Sanskrit जनति (janati, “to beget, create, produce; to assign, procure”).
4. Eclipsed non-native Middle English roy (“king”) (Early Modern English roy), borrowed from Old French rei, roi, roy (“king”).
5. The verb is inherited from Middle English kingen, kyngen (“to perform the duties of a king”), itself from the noun. See: Middle English Nouns 'king', Old English Nouns 'cening', Dutch Nouns 'koning', German Nouns 'König', Faroese Nouns 'kongur', Icelandic Nouns 'kóngur', Norwegian Bokmål Nouns 'konge', Norwegian Nynorsk Nouns 'konge', Swedish Nouns 'konung', Bulgarian Nouns 'кнез', Czech Nouns 'kněz', Polish Nouns 'ksiądz', Slovak Nouns 'kňaz', Latin Nouns 'genō', Greek Nouns 'γενεά', Belarusan Nouns 'зяць', Czech Nouns 'zeť', Polish Nouns 'zięć', Russian Nouns 'зять', Slovak Nouns 'zať'.

Verbs referencing "king"

Danish Nouns konge, Norwegian Nynorsk Nouns konge, German Nouns König, Dutch Nouns koning, Polish Nouns król, Latvian Nouns ķēniņš.