family

English Online Dictionary. What means family‎? What does family mean?

English

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Etymology

From Late Middle English famylye, from Latin familia (“a household”). Displaced native Old English hīred. Doublet of familia.

Pronunciation

• enPR: fămĭli, fămli
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈfæm(ɪ)li/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈfæm(ə)li/, /ˈfæmɪli/
• (New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈfɛm(ɘ)li/
• Hyphenation: fa‧mi‧ly, fam‧ily

Noun

family (countable and uncountable, plural families)

2. 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.
3. An extended family: a group of people who are related to one another by blood or marriage.
4. A nuclear family: a mother and father who are married and cohabiting and their child or children.

5. (uncountable) Members of one's family collectively.

6. A (close-knit) group of people related by blood, friendship, marriage, law, or custom, especially if they live or work together.
   1. (uncountable, gay slang) The gay community.
7. (uncountable) Lineage, especially honorable or noble lineage.
8. 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.
   2. (biology, taxonomy) A category in the classification of organisms, ranking below order and above genus; a taxon at that rank.

      Synonym: familia
   3. (set theory, countable) A collection of sets, especially of subsets of a given set.

   4. (music) A group of instruments having the same basic method of tone production.

   5. (linguistics) A group of languages believed to have descended from the same ancestral language.

      Synonym: language family

      the Indo-European family

      the Afroasiatic family

Usage notes

• In some dialects, for a family of humans (relatives, parents, children, etc), notional agreement is the norm and formal agreement is uncommon. Thus the family are coming for a holiday dinner rather than the family is coming for a holiday dinner.

Synonyms

• (relatives): flesh and blood, kin, kinfolk, fam, See Thesaurus:family
• (class): Thesaurus:class

Hyponyms

• (relatives): nuclear family, immediate family, extended family
• (computing): C family

Derived terms

Related terms

Descendants

• Jamaican Creole: faambli, fambili
• Tok Pisin: famili
• Sranan Tongo: famiri
• → Chuukese: famini
• → Malay: famili
• → Maori: whāmere

Translations

Adjective

family (not comparable)

1. Suitable for children and adults.

2. (gay slang) Homosexual.

Translations

See also

• Category:Family
• (taxonomy, rank):

• domain
• kingdom
• phylum/division
• class
• order
• superfamily
• family
  • subfamily, tribe
• genus
• species

References

• “family”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “family”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “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.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “family”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “family”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Further reading

• family on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Family (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Family of sets on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Family (biology) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “family n.¹”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present