# tribal

Pronunciation: say "TRY-buhl" /ˈtɹaɪbəl/

## Adjective

1. Connected with or characteristic of tribes and their members.
   - Simple: Having to do with a tribe or the people in it.
   - _The elders preside over tribal ceremonies marking the changing seasons._
   - _Researchers recorded several tribal dialects before they disappeared._
2. Founded on or arranged according to divisions among tribes.
   - Simple: Built around tribes as the main way that people are grouped.
   - _Voting in the district often breaks down along tribal allegiances._
   - _The constitution tried to replace tribal governance with a national parliament._
3. Featuring designs or styles characteristic of an indigenous people.
   - Simple: Using patterns or styles that come from a native people.
   - _The collection mixes modern tailoring with tribal motifs from West Africa._
   - _He decorated the room with tribal masks and woven hangings._

## Noun

4. A design or image influenced by indigenous peoples, especially one tattooed onto the skin.
   - Simple: A pattern or picture inspired by native peoples, often worn as a tattoo.
   - _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._
5. A person who is a member of a tribe. *(India)*
   - Simple: A person who belongs to a tribe.
   - _A tribal from the highlands testified about the disputed land._
   - _The census struggled to count tribals living deep in the forest._

## Adjective

6. Relating to the evolutionary development of a group or lineage, rather than that of a single organism. *(rare)*
   - Simple: Having to do with how a whole group of living things changed over a very long time, not a single animal.
   - _Haeckel read each embryo as a brief replay of its tribal history._
   - _Older biologists contrasted tribal development with the growth of a single organism._

## 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.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/tribal (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).