clan
noun
Simple meaning
A group of people all descended from a common ancestor, in fact or belief.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
klanIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈklæn
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
anthropology
A group of people all descended from a common ancestor, in fact or belief, especially when the exact genealogies are not known.
anthropology
Group of people related by blood or marriage
A traditional social group of families in the Scottish Highlands having a common hereditary chieftain.
Any group defined by family ties with some sort of political unity.
A badger colony.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (anthropology) A group of people all descended from a common ancestor, in fact or belief, especially when the exact genealogies are not known.
Used this way, clan is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use clan
- “Our whole family, like a small clan, gathered for the annual reunion.”noun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.