English

Alternative forms

• cater cousin

Noun

cater-cousin ‎(plural cater-cousins)

1. Distant relative, especially a very distant relative, of doubtful relation.
   • William Shakespeare, ca. 1600 Merchant of Venice, ii. 2.

     His master and he, saving your worship’s reverence, are scarce cater-cousins.

2. A close or good friend. An intimate. A bosom friend. An intimate friend who is not a blood relation. A person treated as a cousin (relative) who is not a blood relation
   • Sheila B. Blume. 2006. Cater-cousin, The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form

     I am head over heels over Fred—
     

     My most intimate friend, so I've said;
     

     I have overheard buzzin's
     

     That we're cater-cousins.
     

     No matter—we're soon to be wed.

   • Thomas Ingoldsby (a.k.a. Richard Barnham). 1840. Mrs. Botherby's Story: The Leech of Folkestone. The Ingoldsby Legends, or Mirth and Madness, First Volume. London, Richard Bentley and Son, 1894.

     The world talks loudly of your learning, your skill, and cunning in arts the most abstruse; nay, sooth to say, some look coldly on you therefore, and stickle not to aver that you are cater-cousin with Beelzebub himself.

Synonyms

• (close friend): bosom buddy, bosom friend, intimate

References

1. 1 2 3 Liberman, Anatoly. An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-81665272-3, “Kitty-corner”, pp. 133–135

• Knapp LM. Smollett and Johnson, Never Cater-Cousins? Modern Philology, Vol. 66, No. 2 (Nov., 1968), pp. 152-154.