Pronunciations (12)
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/ˈkɪŋ/
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[ˈkʰɪŋ]
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/ˈkiŋ/
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[ˈkʰiŋ]
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/ˈkɪŋɡ/
Pronunciation notes
- UK
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[ˈkʰɪŋɡ]
Pronunciation notes
- UK
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/ˈkæŋ/
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[ˈkʰæŋ]
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/ˈkeɪ̯ŋ/
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[ˈkʰeɪ̯ŋ]
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/ˈkɛ̃ŋ/
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[ˈkʰɛ̃ŋ]
Noun
A male monarch; a man who heads a monarchy; in an absolute monarchy, the supreme ruler of his nation.
Usage- Countable
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Henry VIII was the king of England from 1509 to 1547.
Charles the third became the new king of England from 2022.
A male monarch; a man who heads a monarchy; in an absolute monarchy, the supreme ruler of his nation. The monarch with the most power and authority in a monarchy, regardless of sex.
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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.
Hatshepsut was ruling as a king, not queen and she needed to be recognised as such.
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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.
A male monarch; a man who heads a monarchy; in an absolute monarchy, the supreme ruler of his nation. A male leader of a traditional Aboriginal group, often used as a title by colonists.
Usage- Australia
- Countable
- Historical
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Old Culwaddy the ‘king’, squatting by the galley fire, looked up questioningly[.]
A male monarch; a man who heads a monarchy; in an absolute monarchy, the supreme ruler of his nation. A powerful or majorly influential person; someone who holds the preeminent position.
Usage- Countable
- Figurative
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Howard Stern styled himself as the "king of all media".
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"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.[…]"
I'd been the dodgem car king at the Brisbane Ekka in 1975 and all those skills can flooding back[.]
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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”.
A male monarch; a man who heads a monarchy; in an absolute monarchy, the supreme ruler of his nation. Something that has a preeminent position.
Usage- Countable
- Figurative
- Uncountable
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In times of financial panic, cash is king.
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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.
A male monarch; a man who heads a monarchy; in an absolute monarchy, the supreme ruler of his nation. A man worthy of respect.
Usage- Countable
- Slang
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I'm sure you got the job, king.
A component of certain games. The principal chess piece, that players seek to threaten with unavoidable capture to result in a victory by checkmate. It is often the tallest piece, with a symbolic crown with a cross at the top.
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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.
A component of certain games. A playing card with the letter "K" and the image of a king on it, the thirteenth card in a given suit.
- Broader terms
A component of certain games. A checker (a piece of checkers/draughts) that reached the farthest row forward, thus becoming crowned (either by turning it upside-down, or by stacking another checker on it) and gaining more freedom of movement.
A component of certain games. The central pin or skittle in bowling games.
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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.
Senses related to animals A male dragonfly; a drake.
Senses related to animals A reproductive caste of termites comprising males who remain in the colony mating with the queen and releasing pheromones that manage the other castes in the colony.
Senses related to animals A chinook salmon (king salmon).
Senses related to animals A group of animals whose tails have become entangled.
Senses related to large sizes of certain items A king-sized bed.
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Try asking for a king-size bed next time because kings are usually firmer.
Senses related to large sizes of certain items A king skin.
Usage- UK usage
- Slang
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Oi mate, have you got kings?
A vertex in a directed graph which can reach every other vertex via a path with a length of at most 2.
Verb
To crown king, to make (a person) king.
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1982, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, South Atlantic Review, Volume 47, page 16, The kinging of Macbeth is the business of the first part of the play […] .
One narrative is the kinging and unkinging of Macbeth; the other narrative is the attack on Banquo's line and that line's eventual accession and supposed Jacobean survival through Malcolm's successful counter-attack on Macbeth.
To rule over as king.
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And let us do it with no show of fear; / No, with no more than if we heard that England / Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance; / For, my good liege, she is so idly king’d, / Her sceptre so fantastically borne / By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth, / That fear attends her not.
To perform the duties of a king.
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1918, Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, The Railroad Trainman, Volume 35, page 675, He had to do all his kinging after supper, which left him no time for roystering with the nobility and certain others.
Second, Mentor (the old man) combined the wisdom of experience with the sensitivity of a fawn in his attempts to convey kinging skills to young Telemachus.
To assume or pretend preeminence (over); to lord it over.
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The seating arrangement of the temple was the Almanach de Gotha of Congregation Emanu-el. Old Ben Reitman, patriarch among the Jewish settlers of Winnebago, who had come over an immigrant youth, and who now owned hundreds of rich farm acres, besides houses, mills and banks, kinged it from the front seat of the center section.
To promote a piece of draughts/checkers that has traversed the board to the opposite side, that piece subsequently being permitted to move backwards as well as forwards.
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If the machine does this, it will lose only one point, and as it is not looking far enough ahead, it cannot see that it has not prevented its opponent from kinging but only postponed the evil day.
I was about to make a move that would corner a piece that she was trying to get kinged, but I slid my checker back[…].
To dress and perform as a drag king.
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Through the ex-centric diaspora, kinging in postcolonial Australia has become a site of critical hybridity where diasporic female masculinities have emerged through the contestations of "home" and "host" cultures.
Noun
a male sovereign; ruler of a kingdom
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a very wealthy or powerful businessperson
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an oil baron
preeminence in a particular category or group or field
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the lion is the king of beasts
a checker that has been moved to the opponent's first row where it is promoted to a piece that is free to move either forward or backward
one of the four playing cards in a deck bearing the picture of a king
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(chess) the weakest but the most important piece
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a male competitor who holds a preeminent position
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the husband or widower of a queen
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