| / English Dictionary |
FAMILY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Primary social group; parents and children
Example:
he wanted to have a good job before starting a family
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
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"):
couple; match; mates (a pair of people who live together)
man and wife; marriage; married couple (two people who are married to each other)
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 2
Meaning:
People descended from a common ancestor
Example:
his family has lived in Massachusetts since the Mayflower
Synonyms:
family; family line; folk; kinfolk; kinsfolk; phratry; sept
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
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 3
Meaning:
A collection of things sharing a common attribute
Example:
there are two classes of detergents
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
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)
stamp (a type or class)
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))
grammatical category; syntactic category ((grammar) a category of words having the same grammatical properties)
Sense 4
Meaning:
A social unit living together
Example:
the family refused to accept his will
Synonyms:
family; home; house; household; menage
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
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"):
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))
foster family (the family of a fosterling)
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 5
Meaning:
(biology) a taxonomic group containing one or more genera
Example:
sharks belong to the fish family
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Hypernyms ("family" is a kind of...):
taxon; taxonomic category; taxonomic group (animal or plant group having natural relations)
Meronyms (members of "family"):
genus ((biology) taxonomic group containing one or more species)
tribe ((biology) a taxonomic category between a genus and a subfamily)
subfamily ((biology) a taxonomic category below a family)
Reoviridae (a family of arboviruses carried by arthropods)
Rhabdoviridae; Arenaviridae (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)
Filoviridae (a family of threadlike RNA viruses that cause diseases in humans and nonhuman primates (monkeys and chimpanzees))
bacteria family (a family of bacteria)
protoctist family (any of the families of Protoctista)
Endamoebidae; family Endamoebidae (a large family of endoparasitic amebas that invade the digestive tract)
fish family (any of various families of fish)
chordate family (any family in the phylum Chordata)
bird family (a family of warm-blooded egg-laying vertebrates characterized by feathers and forelimbs modified as wings)
amphibian family (any family of amphibians)
reptile family (a family of reptiles)
arthropod family (any of the arthropods)
mammal family (a family of mammals)
coelenterate family (a family of coelenterates)
ctenophore family (a family of ctenophores)
Holonyms ("family" is a member of...):
order ((biology) taxonomic group containing one or more families)
Sense 6
Meaning:
An association of people who share common beliefs or activities
Example:
the church welcomed new members into its fellowship
Synonyms:
family; fellowship
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
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)
Sense 7
Meaning:
A loose affiliation of gangsters in charge of organized criminal activities
Synonyms:
crime syndicate; family; mob; syndicate
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
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:
A person having kinship with another or others
Example:
he's family
Synonyms:
family; kin; kinsperson
Classified under:
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)
Context examples:
However, it is the first mammalian member of the family with a primarily non-lens role.
(Absent in Melanoma 1, NCI Thesaurus/from OMIM)
It is a type of Bcl-2 family inhibitor.
(ABT-263, NCI Dictionary)
It belongs to the family of drugs called analgesics.
(Acetaminophen, NCI Dictionary)
It belongs to the family of drugs called sulfonamides.
(ABT-751, NCI Dictionary)
My family itself is so small that it will not take me long to describe it.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Because schizophrenia tends to run in families, scientists have long suspected a genetic component.
(Over 100 Genetic Sites Tied to Schizophrenia, NIH)
Each affected person had one mutant and one normal copy of the gene, while the unaffected family members had two normal copies of the gene.
(Researchers discover new autoinflammatory disease and uncover its biological cause, National Institutes of Health)
Other factors beyond the scope of the study, such as family duties, also could play a role in affecting workers' blood pressure, he said.
(High Blood Pressure Liked to Long Hours on Job, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
Family members who carry a rare gene mutation called Presenilin 1 (PSEN1) E280A, have a 99.9% risk of developing early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
(Unique case of disease resistance reveals possible Alzheimer’s treatment, National Institutes of Health)
The new test uses stem cell technology to look for markers in the blood of people who, because of diabetes or family history, are more likely to develop pancreatic cancer.
(New Test May Detect Pancreatic Cancer Early, VOA News)
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