The words kith and kin are some of the oldest in the English language, appearing somewhere between 400 and 800 AD.
They are now also hugely unfamiliar and odd-sounding, but their meaning is simple.
Kin refers to close blood or marriage relatives.
There's the link to the German word Kind, your husband or wife, your children, your parents.
And kith refers to the community at large, neighbors, colleagues, the village, the city, the people you pass in the street, friends you make at work or through hobbies.
If we think about the love we're interested in nowadays, it is overwhelmingly the love of kin.
When we think of falling in love, it's with one very special person who will understand us totally, with whom our souls will fuse, a best friend, angel, co-parent, therapist, sex mate, and companion all rolled into one, someone who will exhaust our imaginations, someone who will render everyone else redundant.
The dream is intense, but the search for this sort of love is also notoriously troubled.
It's hugely unlikely, statistically, that we will ever feel as close to our kin, to our families and lovers, as we would like.
Resentments are legion.
