family
Pluralfamilies
Pluralfamilies
- 1A group of people closely related by blood, marriage, or adoption, especially parents and their children.
The family renting the flat upstairs is a single dad with two teenage daughters.
After the move, our family settled into a quieter neighborhood.
UsageCan take a singular verb (the family is small) or, when you think of the members, a plural one (the family are all here).
Note
Jane Austen writes "the whole family were indebted", counting the members one by one, while Walter Besant's "the family is just assuming" treats them as a single unit.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Jane Austen wrote the quoted wording in the narration of Pride and Prejudice. gutenberg.org
- Walter Besant wrote the quoted wording in the narration of The Ivory Gate. gutenberg.org
- 2A wide group of people related to one another by blood or marriage, including relatives beyond the immediate household.
Every summer the whole family rents a lake house for a week-long reunion.
Holidays at her family's place mean dozens of cousins, aunts, and uncles.
UsageFrequently the whole family or extended family for relatives beyond the household.
- 3A group of people, often close-knit, who are bound together by blood, marriage, friendship, law, or custom, particularly those who live or work together.
After a decade on the same crew, the firefighters considered themselves a family.
The little theater company runs like a family, sharing meals and quarrels alike.
UsageA team or workplace may be described as like a family or one big happy family.
Similarbrotherhood, community, clan, tribe
Note
The kinship word stretched to cover chosen bonds: a fraternity, a crew, a workplace. Crime family and Mafia family borrow its loyalty and hierarchy for organized crime.
- 4The children someone has, or a couple have together, considered collectively rather than as including the parents.
He took a job closer to home so he could spend more time with his wife and young family.
The couple raised a family of three boys in a two-bedroom apartment.
UsageSet phrases: start a family, raise a family, a young family, his wife and family.
Similarchildren
Note
The sense behind start a family and raise a family, where family means the children rather than the whole household. It explains phrases like his wife and family, which would otherwise count the wife twice, and a young family, which describes the children's ages, not the parents'. When a couple is planning a family, children are the plan.
- 5A category in the scientific classification of living things, ranking below order and above genus.
Biologists place dogs, wolves, and foxes in the family Canidae.
The grass family includes wheat, rice, and corn.
UsageThe formal name follows directly and is capitalized: the family Canidae.
Note
The name is capitalized, and botanical family names usually end in -aceae, as with Lejeuneaceae and Jubulaceae, the pair Rudolf M. Schuster compares in The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Scientific family names are capitalized. stylemanual.gov.au
- Rudolf M. Schuster compares Lejeuneaceae and Jubulaceae in The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America. en.wiktionary.org
- 6A group of things classed together because they share important features or a common origin, such as languages or musical instruments.
Designers chose typefaces from a single family for a consistent look.
Carbon forms a large family of compounds with hydrogen.
Similargroup, class, category, set
Note
The general classifying sense. Pharmacologists speak of the racetam family of drugs, typographers of a font family, and linguists of families of languages. The underlying image is kinship, so the word suggests members that belong together by shared design or descent, not merely things that look alike.
- 7A person's line of descent or ancestry, especially an honorable or noble lineage.
The duke traced his family back to the eleventh century.
Marrying into such a distinguished family raised his social standing.
Similarlineage, ancestry, line, bloodline, pedigree
Note
Here family is a possession of rank rather than a group of people: one has it or lacks it, and the uncountable use gives that away. Dickens plays on exactly this in Bleak House. A woman is whispered not to have even "family", while Sir Leicester "had so much family that perhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more."
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 2 facts
- Charles Dickens wrote Bleak House. gutenberg.org
- The narrator reports a whisper that Lady Dedlock lacked family, then contrasts this with Sir Leicester's abundance of family; the quoted wording is accurate. gutenberg.org
- 8Suitable for both children and adults, and appropriate for audiences of all ages.
The studio aimed for a family film that parents and children would both enjoy.
They marketed the show as family entertainment, clean enough for young viewers.
UsageUsed before a noun: a family film, family entertainment, a family restaurant.
Similarwholesome
Less common meanings
- 9In gay slang, the gay community, thought of as a close-knit group of people who belong together.
There's plenty of family on the night shift at the hospital, if you know where to look.
Back when it was risky to be openly gay, the corner bar was one of the few places the family could gather safely.
Note
An in-group word: gay people speaking of one another as kin, so that belonging is put in the language of relatives. It behaves as a mass noun, usually with no article: "there is family working there," as Gloria Godqueen wrote in the Bay Area Reporter in 1982, much as one says there's staff on duty. Said of one person (he's family), it comes close to an adjective meaning simply "gay".
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 1 fact
- Gloria Godqueen wrote “there is family working there” in the Bay Area Reporter in 1982. en.wiktionary.org
- 10A group of animals related to one another, usually a mother, or a male and female that have paired up, along with their offspring.
Biologists followed an otter family for months as the pups learned to hunt along the riverbank.
Each spring the swan families on the lake glide past with their gray cygnets trailing behind.
Note
Where English has a special group word, such as a pride of lions or a pod of whales, family remains the neutral choice, and it points to parents and their young rather than to any larger herd or flock.
- 11A collection of sets, especially of subsets of a given set, considered together.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
Latin familia ("a household") gave Late Middle English famylye. It pushed out hīred, the native Old English word, and familia is its doublet.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Latin familia meant “a household”. en.wiktionary.org
- Late Middle English famylye came from Latin familia. en.wiktionary.org
- Family displaced the native Old English word hīred. en.wiktionary.org
- English family and English familia are doublets. en.wiktionary.org