tribe
noun · verb
Simple meaning
The collective noun for different animals.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
trybIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈtɹaɪb
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
The collective noun for various animals.
A socially cohesive group of people within a society.
synecdochically
A tribal nation or people.
stock breeding
A family of animals descended from some particular female progenitor, through the female line.
A group of affiliated Mardi Gras Indians.
historyanthropology
An ethnic group larger than a band or clan (and which may contain clans) but smaller than a nation (and which in turn may constitute a nation with other tribes). The tribe is often the basis of ethnic identity.
verb
transitive
To distribute into tribes or classes; to categorize.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Group of people related by blood or marriage
Used this way, tribe is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in family or home contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Family/home
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use tribe
- “The children learned about an ancient tribe and their customs in school.”
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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.