family
Meaning
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- 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.
- An extended family: a group of people who are related to one another by blood or marriage.
- A nuclear family: a mother and father who are married and cohabiting and their child or children.
- Members of one's family collectively.
- A (close-knit) group of people related by blood, friendship, marriage, law, or custom, especially if they live or work together.
- (slang) A (close-knit) group of people related by blood, friendship, marriage, law, or custom, especially if they live or work together.
- Lineage, especially honorable or noble lineage.
- A category in the classification of organisms, ranking below order and above genus; a taxon at that rank.
- 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.
- A collection of sets, especially of subsets of a given set.
- A group of instruments having the same basic method of tone production.
- A group of languages believed to have descended from the same ancestral language.
Frequency
Hyphenated as
fa‧mi‧ly
Pronounced as (IPA)
/ˈfæm(ɪ)li/
Etymology
From Late Middle English famylye, from Latin familia (“a household”). Displaced native Old English hīred. Doublet of familia.
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