tribal
Noun pluraltribals
Pluraltribals
- 1Connected with or characteristic of tribes and their members.
The elders preside over tribal ceremonies marking the changing seasons.
Researchers recorded several tribal dialects before they disappeared.
Note
The core sense, built plainly from tribe + -al after Latin tribālis and in English use since the 1630s. It marks what belongs to a tribe or comes from one: tribal law, tribal ceremonies, tribal dialects. Compare the "organized by tribes" meaning. Tribal law belongs to a tribe, while a tribal society is structured around tribes. The first describes possessions and customs, and the second describes how a whole society is arranged.
- 2Founded on or arranged according to divisions among tribes.
Voting in the district often breaks down along tribal allegiances.
The constitution tried to replace tribal governance with a national parliament.
- 3Featuring designs or styles characteristic of an indigenous people.
The collection mixes modern tailoring with tribal motifs from West Africa.
He decorated the room with tribal masks and woven hangings.
Similarethnic
- 4A design or image influenced by indigenous peoples, especially one tattooed onto the skin.
She booked an appointment to have a tribal added to her forearm.
The studio's portfolio was full of intricate tribals in heavy black ink.
Note
The adjective turned into a countable noun: a tribal is shorthand for a tribal design, growing out of the design-and-style adjective. It counts like any noun (have a tribal done, a portfolio of tribals), but its plural is spelled exactly like the plural of a member of a tribe. Only context tells a tattoo artist's tribals from people.
- 5A person who is a member of a tribe.
A tribal from the highlands testified about the disputed land.
The census struggled to count tribals living deep in the forest.
Similartribesman
Note
The noun belongs to Indian English, where it is at home in anthropology and social policy. Human Science: Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India set tribals against non-tribals in 1983. The 2018 Community Practices in India uses it alongside Adivasi. Elsewhere, an adjectival phrase such as tribal member usually does the same work.
Less common meaning
- 6Relating to the evolutionary development of a group or lineage, rather than that of a single organism.
Haeckel read each embryo as a brief replay of its tribal history.
Older biologists contrasted tribal development with the growth of a single organism.
Similarphylogenetic
Oppositeontogenetic
Note
This sense survives from the theory of recapitulation, now defunct, which read an organism's early development as a replay of its lineage's past. It entered English through the phrase tribal history, an overly literal rendering of German Stammesgeschichte. Modern biology says phylogenetic instead. The word is rare and historical, so use it only when quoting or discussing that older literature.
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Practice
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Origin
From Latin tribālis; by surface analysis it is tribe + -al, first attested in the 1630s. The special adjectival sense tied to the defunct theory of recapitulation comes from 'tribal history', an overly literal learned borrowing of German Stammesgeschichte, since Stamm is normally translated as 'tribe' only in its ethnographic sense.