Sinnekins are stock characters often found in medieval drama, especially morality plays. They most often occur as pairs of devilish characters who exert their perfidious influence on the main character of the drama. The word sinnekin comes from the Dutch word sinneken which, by 1604, connoted the words "senses" or "meanings". The word's alternative meaning, drawn from sixteenth-century Dutch rederijker drama, was "a symbolic or allegorical person in a spel van sinne," an allegorically fashioned dramatic exposition of an argument on an ethical, ideological, political, or religious issue.