Pronunciation Noun
family
- (countable) A group of people who are closely related to one another (by blood, marriage or adoption); kin; for example, a set of parents and their children; an immediate family.
- Our family lives in town.
- 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], OCLC 16832619 ↗:
- Such a scandal#English|scandal as the prosecution of a brother#English|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#English|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.
- (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 (close-knit) group of people related by blood, friendship, marriage, law, or custom, especially if they live or work together.
- (uncountable, taxonomy) lineage, especially an honorable one
- 1853, Charles Dickens, Bleak House, ch 2:
- 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.
- 1853, Charles Dickens, Bleak House, ch 2:
- (countable, 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[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 […]
- (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
- Used attributively.
- The dog was kept as a family pet.
- For Apocynaceae, this type of flower is a family characteristic.
- (relatives) flesh and blood, kin, kinfolk
- (class) Thesaurus:class
- French: famille
- German: Familie
- Italian: famiglia
- Portuguese: família
- Russian: семе́йство
- Spanish: familia
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.
- German: Familien-
- Portuguese: de família
- Russian: семейный
- German: vom anderen Ufer
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