Meaning of kissing cousin | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A relatively distant relative, or a friend, who is familiar enough to be greeted with a kiss.
2. A thing which is related or similar to another thing.
   figuratively

Equivalents

Examples

“[A]fter the initial public brouhaha, wildlife administrators will suddenly decide that the classification of the Aleutian Canada goose as an endangered species was a gross mistake all along. Either the bird will be downgraded to "threatened" status—which means it can be hunted—or it will be declared a nonspecies, as has already happened to all its taxonomic kissing cousins.”

“Silicon is a “kissing cousin” of carbon. Notice it immediately below carbon in the Periodic Table. The arrangement of silicon’s outer electrons resembles those of carbon. For this reason, silicon and carbon are chemically similar.”

CEFR level