FOLKS

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

People in general (often used in the plural)

Example:

the common people determine the group character and preserve its customs from one generation to the next

Synonyms:

common people; folk; folks

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

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

people ((plural) any group of human beings (men or women or children) collectively)

Meronyms (members of "folks"):

pleb; plebeian (one of the common people)

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

country people; countryfolk (people raised in or living in a rural environment; rustics)

gentlefolk (people of good family and breeding and high social status)

grass roots (the common people at a local level (as distinguished from the centers of political activity))

home folk (folks from your own home town)

rabble; ragtag; ragtag and bobtail; riffraff (disparaging terms for the common people)

Derivation:

folksy (very informal and familiar)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Your parents

Example:

he wrote to his folks every day

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

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

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

Domain usage:

plural; plural form (the form of a word that is used to denote more than one)

Credits

Context examples:

Them feet-folks from York and Leeds that be always eatin' cured herrin's an' drinkin' tea an' lookin' out to buy cheap jet would creed aught.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Street after street and all the folks asleep—street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession and all as empty as a church—till at last I got into that state of mind when a man listens and listens and begins to long for the sight of a policeman.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The folks of the Great House were to spend the evening of this day at the Cottage; and it being now too late in the year for such visits to be made on foot, the coach was beginning to be listened for, when the youngest Miss Musgrove walked in.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

A series of disgraceful brawls took place, two of which ended in the police-court, until at last he became the terror of the village, and the folks would fly at his approach, for he is a man of immense strength, and absolutely uncontrollable in his anger.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She knows just what folks like, and gets paid well for writing it.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

He listened, and heard an ant-king complain: Why cannot folks, with their clumsy beasts, keep off our bodies?

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

But theer was some poor folks aboard as had illness among 'em, and she took care of them; and theer was the children in our company, and she took care of them; and so she got to be busy, and to be doing good, and that helped her.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

They vas packed all round, the folks was, but down through the middle of ’em was a passage just so as the gentry could come through to their seats, and the stage it vas of wood, as the custom then vas, and a man’s ’eight above the ’eads of the people.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

So I have heard you tell them, said the lord of the castle; and for myself, father, though I am a true son of holy Church, yet I think that you were better employed in saying your mass and in teaching the children of my men-at-arms, than in going over the country-side to put ideas in these folks' heads which would never have been there but for you.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They, an' all grims an' signs an' warnin's, be all invented by parsons an' illsome beuk-bodies an' railway touters to skeer an' scunner hafflin's, an' to get folks to do somethin' that they don't other incline to.