The Collaborative International Dictionary
Kind \Kind\, n. [OE. kinde, cunde, AS. cynd. See Kind, a.]
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Nature; natural instinct or disposition. [Obs.]
He knew by kind and by no other lore.
--Chaucer.Some of you, on pure instinct of nature, Are led by kind t'admire your fellow-creature.
--Dryden. -
Race; genus; species; generic class; as, in mankind or humankind. ``Come of so low a kind.''
--Chaucer.Every kind of beasts, and of birds.
--James iii.7.She follows the law of her kind.
--Wordsworth.Here to sow the seed of bread, That man and all the kinds be fed.
--Emerson. -
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 !
--Spenser.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?
--Bacon.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.
Tax on tillage was often levied in kind upon corn.
--Arbuthnot.Syn: Sort; species; type; class; genus; nature; style; character; breed; set.
Usage examples of "a kind of".
His crush is actually sorta funny & sweet, but there's nothing funny about what's currently going on around here: Seth's 'Dweem Fwoatah' is gone, and all this is a kind of tantrum.
Once or twice in his life he'd had little precognitive flashes hunches, psychic nudges but he was now gripped not by a flash but a kind of cramp: a certainty that something was going to happen.
She had natural blonde hair and rather light blue eyes that gave her expression a kind of passionate vagueness.
It was nothing but a kind of last-ditch wishfulness that made him go quietly into Calvin Gray's bedroom.
To him, there had always been a kind of simple excitement in the mere motion of driving through New York in an open car at night, the car like a speedboat skimming through the tall angular canyons, dwarfed even by limousines like sedate yachts, and buses like behemoths towering and roaring clumsily along the stream.
She was holding his arms by the sleeves, making little aimless tugging movements, rocking a little in a kind of anguish of inarticulacy.
Wandering among the crowds, lost in her thoughts, looking at the stores without quite focusing on anything, she found a kind of numb tranquillity.
Guilt was freezing half of her mind, lust was frying the other half, and in between, in a kind of shrinking twilight zone, was the reasonable, good-humored, rational woman she had always considered herself to be.
Peter grabs her and Johnny sees Gary watching with a kind of frozen fascination, waiting for Peter to roll her body into his arms.
He tried for Doc's tone of good cheer a kind of sprinting bedside manner and heard only terror.
He had moved far enough in the direction of the Carvers' house to be caught in a kind of no-man's-land when the two vans opened fire, and knew he was extremely lucky to still be alive.
Her husband, also skinny (but with a blooming suburban potbelly just beginning to take shape), did a kind of helpless, panicky dance around her.
It's an alien with a bulging forehead, almond-shaped eyes that are dark and huge, and a mouth that isn't a mouth at all but a kind of fleshy horn.
This phrase already has become a kind of magical structure inside his head.
In his mind he is now hearing a very strange thing, a kind of soundtrack.