FAMILY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does family mean? 

• FAMILY (noun)
  The noun FAMILY has 8 senses:

1. a social unit living together

2. primary social group; parents and children

3. a collection of things sharing a common attribute

4. people descended from a common ancestor

5. a person having kinship with another or others

6. (biology) a taxonomic group containing one or more genera

7. a loose affiliation of gangsters in charge of organized criminal activities

8. an association of people who share common beliefs or activities

  Familiarity information: FAMILY used as a noun is common.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FAMILY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A social unit living together

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

family; home; house; household; menage

Context example:

the family refused to accept his will

Hypernyms ("family" is a kind of...):

social unit; unit (an organization regarded as part of a larger social group)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "family"):

foster family (the family of a fosterling)

menage a trois (household for three; an arrangement where a married couple and a lover of one of them live together while sharing sexual relations)

foster home (a household in which an orphaned or delinquent child is placed (usually by a social-service agency))

extended family (a family consisting of the nuclear family and their blood relatives)

conjugal family; nuclear family (a family consisting of parents and their children and grandparents of a marital partner)

broken home (a family in which the parents have separated or divorced)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Primary social group; parents and children

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

family; family unit

Context example:

he wanted to have a good job before starting a family

Hypernyms ("family" is a kind of...):

clan; kin; kin group; kindred; kinship group; tribe (group of people related by blood or marriage)

Meronyms (members of "family"):

child; kid (a human offspring (son or daughter) of any age)

parent (a father or mother; one who begets or one who gives birth to or nurtures and raises a child; a relative who plays the role of guardian)

sib; sibling (a person's brother or sister)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "family"):

man and wife; marriage; married couple (two people who are married to each other)

couple; match; mates (a pair of people who live together)

Instance hyponyms:

Bronte sisters (a 19th century family of three sisters who all wrote novels)

Marx Brothers (a family of United States comedians consisting of four brothers with an anarchic sense of humor)

Derivation:

familial (relating to or having the characteristics of a family)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A collection of things sharing a common attribute

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

category; class; family

Context example:

there are two classes of detergents

Hypernyms ("family" is a kind of...):

accumulation; aggregation; assemblage; collection (several things grouped together or considered as a whole)

Meronyms (members of "family"):

superphylum ((biology) a taxonomic group ranking between a phylum and below a class or subclass)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "family"):

histocompatibility complex (a family of fifty or more genes on the sixth human chromosome that code for proteins on the surfaces of cells and that play a role in the immune response)

denomination (a class of one kind of unit in a system of numbers or measures or weights or money)

conjugation (a class of verbs having the same inflectional forms)

declension (a class of nouns or pronouns or adjectives in Indo-European languages having the same (or very similar) inflectional forms)

sex (either of the two categories (male or female) into which most organisms are divided)

woodwind family ((music) the family of woodwind instruments)

violin family ((music) the family of bowed stringed instruments)

brass family ((music) the family of brass instruments)

paradigm; substitution class (the class of all items that can be substituted into the same position (or slot) in a grammatical sentence (are in paradigmatic relation with one another))

stamp (a type or class)

grammatical category; syntactic category ((grammar) a category of words having the same grammatical properties)

Sense 4

Meaning:

People descended from a common ancestor

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

family; family line; folk; kinfolk; kinsfolk; phratry; sept

Context example:

his family has lived in Massachusetts since the Mayflower

Hypernyms ("family" is a kind of...):

ancestry; blood; blood line; bloodline; descent; line; line of descent; lineage; origin; parentage; pedigree; stemma; stock (the descendants of one individual)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "family"):

people (members of a family line)

homefolk (the people of your home locality (especially your own family))

house (aristocratic family line)

dynasty (a sequence of powerful leaders in the same family)

gens; name (family based on male descent)

Sense 5

Meaning:

A person having kinship with another or others

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

family; kin; kinsperson

Context example:

he's family

Hypernyms ("family" is a kind of...):

relation; relative (a person related by blood or marriage)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "family"):

affine ((anthropology) kin by marriage)

Derivation:

familial (occurring among members of a family usually by heredity)

Sense 6

Meaning:

(biology) a taxonomic group containing one or more genera

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Context example:

sharks belong to the fish family

Hypernyms ("family" is a kind of...):

taxon; taxonomic category; taxonomic group (animal or plant group having natural relations)

Meronyms (members of "family"):

tribe ((biology) a taxonomic category between a genus and a subfamily)

genus ((biology) taxonomic group containing one or more species)

Arenaviridae (a family of arborviruses carried by arthropods)

subfamily ((biology) a taxonomic category below a family)

Reoviridae (a family of arboviruses carried by arthropods)

Rhabdoviridae (a family of arborviruses carried by arthropods)

Flaviviridae; Togaviridae (a family of arboviruses carried by arthropods)

Bunyaviridae (a large family of arboviruses that affect a wide range of hosts (mainly vertebrates and arthropods))

Domain category:

biological science; biology (the science that studies living organisms)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "family"):

worm family (a family of worms)

mollusk family (a family of mollusks)

family Panorpidae; Panorpidae (a family of insects of the order Mecoptera)

Bittacidae; family Bittacidae (a family of predacious tropical insects of the order Mecoptera)

echinoderm family (a family of echinoderms)

form family ((biology) an artificial taxonomic category for organisms of which the true relationships are obscure)

moss family (a family of mosses)

liliopsid family; monocot family (family of flowering plants having a single cotyledon (embryonic leaf) in the seed)

dicot family; magnoliopsid family (family of flowering plants having two cotyledons (embryonic leaves) in the seed which usually appear at germination)

fungus family (includes lichen families)

plant family (a family of plants)

fern family (families of ferns and fern allies)

bacteria family (a family of bacteria)

ctenophore family (a family of ctenophores)

coelenterate family (a family of coelenterates)

mammal family (a family of mammals)

arthropod family (any of the arthropods)

reptile family (a family of reptiles)

amphibian family (any family of amphibians)

bird family (a family of warm-blooded egg-laying vertebrates characterized by feathers and forelimbs modified as wings)

chordate family (any family in the phylum Chordata)

fish family (any of various families of fish)

Endamoebidae; family Endamoebidae (a large family of endoparasitic amebas that invade the digestive tract)

protoctist family (any of the families of Protoctista)

Filoviridae (a family of threadlike RNA viruses that cause diseases in humans and nonhuman primates (monkeys and chimpanzees))

Holonyms ("family" is a member of...):

order ((biology) taxonomic group containing one or more families)

Sense 7

Meaning:

A loose affiliation of gangsters in charge of organized criminal activities

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

crime syndicate; family; mob; syndicate

Hypernyms ("family" is a kind of...):

gangdom; gangland; organized crime (underworld organizations)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "family"):

Cosa Nostra; Maffia; Mafia (a crime syndicate in the United States; organized in families; believed to have important relations to the Sicilian Mafia)

Sense 8

Meaning:

An association of people who share common beliefs or activities

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

family; fellowship

Context example:

the church welcomed new members into its fellowship

Hypernyms ("family" is a kind of...):

association (a formal organization of people or groups of people)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "family"):

koinonia (Christian fellowship or communion with God or with fellow Christians; said in particular of the early Christian community)

 Context examples 

John Reed is dead, too, sir: he ruined himself and half-ruined his family, and is supposed to have committed suicide.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

This eclipse might be tied to a message you received six months ago on July 16, 2019, which is the date of another eclipse in the Capricorn-Cancer family of signs.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

Top off! cried the mouse, that is a very odd and uncommon name, is it a usual one in your family?

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Jo's book was the pride of her heart, and was regarded by her family as a literary sprout of great promise.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

She gave me the name of Grildrig, which the family took up, and afterwards the whole kingdom.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

She had long suspected the family to be very high, and this made it certain.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Abiraterone inhibits the enzymatic activity of steroid 17alpha-monooxygenase (17alpha-hydrolase/C17,20 lyase complex; CYP17A1), a member of the cytochrome p450 family that catalyzes the 17alpha-hydroxylation of steroid intermediates involved in testosterone synthesis.

(Abiraterone, NCI Thesaurus)

A question about whether an individual is or has been able to enjoy meals with family or friends.

(Able to Enjoy Meals with Family or Friends, NCI Thesaurus)

Mr Elliot had attempted no apology, and shewn himself as unsolicitous of being longer noticed by the family, as Sir Walter considered him unworthy of it: all acquaintance between them had ceased.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

It belongs to the family of drugs called gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) antagonists.

(Abarelix, NCI Dictionary)