family
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
- See Wiktionary:Families for a guide to language families within Wiktionary
Contents
English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From Early Modern English familie (not in Middle English), from Latin familia (“the servants in a household, domestics collectively”), from famulus (“servant”)/famula (“female servant”), from Old Latin famul, of obscure origin. Perhaps derived from or cognate to Oscan famel (“servant”).
Pronunciation[edit]
Noun[edit]
family (countable and uncountable, plural families)
- (countable) A father, mother and their sons and daughters; also called nuclear family.
- Our family lives in town.
- 1893, Walter Besant, “Prologue”, in The Ivory Gate:
- 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”, The Economist, 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.
- (countable) A group of people related by blood, marriage, law, or custom.
- crime family, Mafia family
- (countable) A kin, tribe; also called extended family.
- (countable, biology, taxonomy) A rank in the classification of organisms, below order and above genus; a taxon at that rank.
- Magnolias belong to the family Magnoliaceae.
- 1992, Rudolf M. Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, 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) A group of people who live together, or one that is similar to one that is related by blood, marriage, law, or custom, or members of one's intimate social group.
- This is my fraternity family at the university.
- Our company is one big happy family.
- They treated me like family.
- (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.
- (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 Afro-Asiatic language family
- Used attributively.
- The dog was kept as a family pet.
- For Apocynaceae, this type of flower is a family characteristic.
- 2013 June 14, Jonathan Freedland, “Obama's once hip brand is now tainted”, The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 18:
- Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.
Usage notes[edit]
In some dialects, family is used as a plurale tantum.
Synonyms[edit]
- See also Wikisaurus:class
Translations[edit]
father, mother and their sons and daughters
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kin, tribe
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rank in a taxonomic classification, above both genus and species
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taxon at this rank
group of people who live together
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group of people similar to (2)
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collectively, people who are members of one's intimate social group
music: a group of instrument 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, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.
Translations to be checked
Derived terms[edit]
- family of curves (matematics)
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.
- Conservative, traditional.
- The cultural struggle is for the survival of family values against all manner of atheistic amorality.
- (slang) Homosexual.
- I knew he was family when I first met him.
Translations[edit]
suitable for children and adults
(slang) homosexual
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Derived terms[edit]
Terms derived from the noun or adjective family
Related terms[edit]
See also[edit]
Statistics[edit]
External links[edit]
- family in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
- family in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
family on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
