Dictionary entry details
• FAMILY (noun)
Meaning:
A social unit living together
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Synonyms:
family; menage; household; house; home
Context examples:
he moved his family to Virginia / It was a good Christian household / I waited until the whole house was asleep / the teacher asked how many people made up his home
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)
Meaning:
Primary social group; parents and children
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Synonyms:
family unit; family
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"):
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)
Meaning:
People descended from a common ancestor
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Synonyms:
family line; phratry; kinfolk; kinsfolk; sept; folk; family
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"):
gens; name (family based on male descent)
dynasty (a sequence of powerful leaders in the same family)
house (aristocratic family line)
homefolk (the people of your home locality (especially your own family))
people (members of a family line)
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)
stamp (a type or class)
woodwind family ((music) the family of woodwind instruments)
violin family ((music) the family of bowed stringed instruments)
class Larvacea; Larvacea (small free-swimming tunicates; sometimes classified as an order)
class Diplopoda; class Myriapoda; Diplopoda; Myriapoda (arthropods having the body composed of numerous double somites each with two pairs of legs: millipedes)
Malacostraca; subclass Malacostraca (largest subclass of Crustacea including most of the well-known marine, freshwater, and terrestrial crustaceans: crabs; lobsters; shrimps; sow bugs; beach flies)
grammatical category; syntactic category ((grammar) a category of words having the same grammatical properties)
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))
brass family ((music) the family of brass instruments)
Meaning:
An association of people who share common beliefs or activities
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Synonyms:
fellowship; family
Context examples:
the message was addressed not just to employees but to every member of the company family / 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)
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"):
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"):
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)
worm family (a family of worms)
ctenophore family (a family of ctenophores)
coelenterate family (a family of coelenterates)
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)
Holonyms ("family" is a member of...):
order ((biology) taxonomic group containing one or more families)
Meaning:
A person having kinship with another or others
Classified under:
Nouns denoting people
Synonyms:
kin; kinsperson; family
Context examples:
he's kin / 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)
Meaning:
A loose affiliation of gangsters in charge of organized criminal activities
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Synonyms:
crime syndicate; syndicate; mob; family
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)
