king

Etymology 1

From Middle English king, kyng, from Old English cyng, cyning (“king”), from Proto-West Germanic *kuning, from Proto-Germanic *kuningaz, *kunungaz (“king”), equivalent to kin + -ing. Doublet of cyning. Cognate with Scots keeng (“king”), North Frisian köning (“king”), West Frisian kening (“king”), Dutch koning (“king”), Low German Koning, Köning (“king”), German König (“king”), Danish konge (“king”), Norwegian konge, Swedish konung, kung (“king”), Icelandic konungur, kóngur (“king”), Polish ksiądz (“priest”), Russian князь (knjazʹ, “prince”), Old Church Slavonic кънѧѕь (kŭnędzĭ), Romanian chinez, Finnish kuningas (“king”), Estonian kuningas, Ingrian kunigas, Karelian kuninkas, Livvi kuńingas, Ludian kuńingas, Veps kuningaz, Võro kuning and Votic kunikaz. Eclipsed non-native Middle English roy (“king”) (Early Modern English roy), borrowed from Old French roi, rei, rai (“king”).

noun

1. A male monarch; a man who heads a monarchy. If it is an absolute monarchy, then he is the supreme ruler of his nation.
   Henry VIII was the king of England from 1509 to 1547.
2. A powerful or majorly influential person.
   Howard Stern styled himself as the "king of all media".
   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 The colossus of science was not the first king of reason, Keynes wrote after reading Newton’s unpublished manuscripts.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”. 2014-06-21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8892
3. (countable or uncountable) Something that has a preeminent position.
   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. June 3, 2012, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Mr. Plow” (season 4, episode 9; originally aired 11/19/1992)”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)
4. A component of certain games.
   1. (chess) 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.
   2. (card games) A playing card with the letter "K" and the image of a king on it, the thirteenth card in a given suit.
   3. 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.
   4. The central pin or skittle in bowling games.
      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
5. (UK, slang) A king skin.
   Oi mate, have you got kings?
6. A male dragonfly; a drake.
7. A king-sized bed.
   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
8. The monarch with the most power and authority in a monarchy, regardless of sex.
   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. 3 January 1891, ““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, 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, pages 63–64
9. (graph theory) A vertex in a directed graph which can reach every other vertex via a path with a length of at most 2.

verb

1. To crown king, to make (a person) king.
   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. 2008, William Shakespeare, edited by A. R. Braunmuller, Macbeth, Introduction, page 24
2. To rule over as king.
3. To perform the duties of a king.
   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. 2001, Chip R. Bell, Managers as Mentors: Building Partnerships for Learning, page 6
4. To assume or pretend preeminence (over); to lord it over.
   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. 1917, Edna Ferber, Fanny Herself, page 32
5. 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.
   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. 1957, Bertram Vivian Bowden, editor, Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines, page 302
   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[…]. 1986, Rick DeMarinis, The Burning Women of Far Cry, page 100
6. To dress and perform as a drag king.
   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. 2008, Audrey Yue, “King Victoria: Asian Drag Kings, Postcolonial Female Masculinity, and Hybrid Sexuality in Australia”, in Fran Martin, Peter Jackson, Audrey Yue, Mark McLelland, editors, AsiaPacifQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities, page 266

Etymology 2

noun

1. Alternative form of qing (“Chinese musical instrument”)