family
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- See Wiktionary:Families for a guide to language families within Wiktionary
English[edit]
Etymology[edit]

A family (sense 1) in Tanzania
From Early Modern English familie (not in Middle English), from Latin familia (“the servants in a household, domestics collectively”), from famulus (“servant”) or famula (“female servant”).
Doublet of familia. Displaced native Old English hīred.
Pronunciation[edit]
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈfæm(ɪ)li/
Audio (UK) (file) - (General American) IPA(key): /ˈfæm(ə)li/, /ˈfæmɪli/
Audio (US) (file) - (New Zealand) IPA(key): /ˈfɛm(ɘ)li/
- Hyphenation: fa‧mi‧ly, fam‧ily
Noun[edit]
family (countable and uncountable, plural families)
- (countable) A group of people who are closely related to one another (by blood, marriage or adoption); kin; in particular, a set of parents and their children; an immediate family.
- Our family lives in town.
- This is a family restaurant, stop making out!
- 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], OCLC 16832619:
- Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family perhaps at a critical moment, when the family is just assuming the robes of respectability: […] it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off.
- 2013 June 1, “Towards the end of poverty”, in The Economist[1], volume 407, number 8838, page 11:
- America’s poverty line is $63 a day for a family of four. In the richer parts of the emerging world $4 a day is the poverty barrier. But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 ([…]): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.
- 2018 May 6, “Rudy Giuliani”, in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 5, episode 10, HBO:
- They’re both New Yorkers coasting on their reputations, they’ve both had three marriages, neither of them can shut up when in front of a camera, and perhaps most importantly, they both want to fuck Ivanka, which-which is weird for Trump because Ivanka is in his family, and it’s weird for Giuliani because she isn’t.
- (countable) An extended family: a group of people who are related to one another by blood or marriage.
- 1915, William T. Groves, A History and Genealogy of the Groves Family in America
- (countable) A nuclear family: a mother and father who are married and cohabiting and their child or children.
- The cultural struggle is for the survival of family values against all manner of atheistic amorality.
- We must preserve the family unit if we want to save civilisation!
- (uncountable) Members of one's family collectively.
- I have a lot of family in Australia.
- He has a sister, but no other family.
- (countable) A (close-knit) group of people related by blood, friendship, marriage, law, or custom, especially if they live or work together.
- crime family, Mafia family
- This is my fraternity family at the university.
- Our company is one big happy family.
- (uncountable) Lineage, especially honorable or noble lineage.
- 1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, chapter 2, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, OCLC 999756093:
- Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about that she had not even 'family'; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that perhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more.
- (countable, biology, taxonomy) A category in the classification of organisms, ranking below order and above genus; a taxon at that rank.
- Synonym: familia
- Magnolias belong to the family Magnoliaceae.
- 1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 4:
- The closest affinities of the Jubulaceae are with the Lejeuneaceae. The two families share in common: a elaters usually 1-spiral, trumpet-shaped and fixed to the capsule valves, distally […].
- (countable) Any group or aggregation of things classed together as kindred or related from possessing in common characteristics which distinguish them from other things of the same order.
- Doliracetam is a drug from the racetam family.
- 2010, Gary Shelly, Jennifer Campbell, Ollie Rivers, Microsoft Expression Web 3: Complete (page 262)
- When creating a font family, first decide whether to use all serif or all sans-serif fonts, then choose two or three fonts of that type […]
- (set theory, countable) A collection of sets, especially of subsets of a given set.
- Let be a family of subsets over .
- (countable, music) A group of instruments having the same basic method of tone production.
- the brass family; the violin family
- (countable, linguistics) A group of languages believed to have descended from the same ancestral language.
- the Indo-European language family; the Afroasiatic language family
Usage notes[edit]
- In some dialects, family is used as a plural (only) noun.
Synonyms[edit]
- (relatives): flesh and blood, kin, kinfolk, See Thesaurus:family
- (class): Thesaurus:class
Hyponyms[edit]
- (relatives): nuclear family, immediate family, extended family
- (computing): C family
Derived terms[edit]
- aluminium family
- baby of the family
- blended family
- county family
- ERM protein family
- Ewing family
- extended family
- family affair
- family allowance
- family annihilator
- family Bible
- family business
- family car
- family celebrant
- family circle
- family court
- Family Day
- family dissident
- family doctor
- family friend
- family-friendliness
- family-friendly
- family ganging
- family grouping
- family guy
- family heirloom
- family historian
- family history
- family home evening
- family jewels
- family law
- family leave
- family man
- family meal
- family medicine
- family member
- family name
- (mathematics) family of curves
- family of orientation
- family of procreation
- (set theory) family of sets
- (set theory) family of subsets
- family pajamas
- family physician
- family planning
- family pole
- family rebel
- family rebellion
- family restaurant
- family reunion
- family romance
- family roof
- family room
- family size
- family-sized
- family tree
- family unit
- family valuer
- family-valuer
- family values
- family woman
- first family
- foster family
- framily
- gene family
- gold star family
- Helly family
- holy family
- host family
- immediate family
- in a family way
- in the family way
- joint family
- keep it in the family
- language family
- live with one's wife's family
- multigene family
- natural family planning
- nuclear family
- one big happy family
- pearly family
- rainbow family
- royal family
- run in the family
- single-parent family
- start a family
- stem family
- the family that prays together stays together
- the family that sleeps together keeps together
- Wood family
- word family
- working family
Related terms[edit]
Descendants[edit]
- Jamaican Creole: faambli, fambili
- Tok Pisin: famili
- → Chuukese: famini
- → Malay: famili
- → Maori: whāmere
Translations[edit]
immediate family [as a group], e.g. parents and their children
|
rank in a taxonomic classification, above both genus and species
|
music: a group of instruments having the same basic method of tone production
|
linguistics: a group of languages believed to have descended from the same ancestral language
|
(used attributively)
|
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
|
Adjective[edit]
family (not comparable)
- Suitable for children and adults.
- It's not good for a date, it's a family restaurant.
- Some animated movies are not just for kids, they are family movies.
- (slang) Homosexual.
- I knew he was family when I first met him.
Translations[edit]
suitable for children and adults
(slang) homosexual
See also[edit]
- Category:Family
- (taxonomy, rank):
References[edit]
- family at OneLook Dictionary Search
- “family”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
- “family”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
- family in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
- "family" in Raymond Williams, Keywords (revised), 1983, Fontana Press, page 1.
- family in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911
- family in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
Further reading[edit]
family on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
Family (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
Family of sets on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
Family (biology) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
Categories:
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *dʰeh₁-
- English terms derived from Proto-Italic
- English terms derived from Latin
- English doublets
- English 3-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms with quotations
- en:Biology
- en:Taxonomy
- en:Set theory
- en:Music
- en:Linguistics
- English adjectives
- English uncomparable adjectives
- English slang
- English 2-syllable words
- English collective nouns
- en:Collectives
- en:Family
- en:Family members
- en:LGBT