Kindred

🔊 KIN-drid  ·  adjective

Kindred is that instant sense of recognition — you meet someone and, five minutes in, something in you just relaxes because they get it, whatever "it" is. On paper it means related by blood or nature, sharing the same qualities, background, or outlook as something else. But the phrase that made this word famous is "kindred spirit" — the friend who feels like family before you've even swapped last names, the person whose brain seems to be running on your exact same frequency.