family
/ˈfæːm(ə)li/
Frequency: 5.66 in modern English
Meaning
noun
A group of people who are closely related to one another (by blood, marriage or adoption); kin; in particular, a set of parents and their children; an immediate family.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
A group of people who are closely related to one another (by blood, marriage or adoption); kin; in particular, a set of parents and their children; an immediate family.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
An extended family: a group of people who are related to one another by blood or marriage.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
A nuclear family: a mother and father who are married and cohabiting and their child or children.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
A (close-knit) group of people related by blood, friendship, marriage, law, or custom, especially if they live or work together.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
A (close-knit) group of people related by blood, friendship, marriage, law, or custom, especially if they live or work together.
Slang; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Our family lives in town."
- "To Jane, he could be only a man whose proposals she had refused, and whose merit she had undervalued; but to her own more extensive information, he was the person, to whom the whole family were indebted for the first of benefits, and whom she regarded herself with an interest, if not quite so tender, at least as reasonable and just, as what Jane felt for Bingley."
- "Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family perhaps at a critical moment, when the family is just assuming the robes of respectability:[…]it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off."
- "America’s poverty line is $63 a day for a family of four. In the richer parts of the emerging world $4 a day is the poverty barrier. But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 ([…]): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short."
- "Both brides and grooms in native Hawaiian tradition wear flower garlands as a physical manifestation of their love for one another, and to some, the twining of the stems is reflective of two families now becoming one. A more tourist-friendly version established in the past couple of decades involves winding the leis around the couple’s hands to bind them together."
- "They’re both New Yorkers coasting on their reputations, they’ve both had three marriages, neither of them can shut up when in front of a camera, and perhaps most importantly, they both want to fuck Ivanka, which-which is weird for Trump because Ivanka is in his family, and it’s weird for Giuliani because she isn’t."
Etymology
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈfæːm(ə)li/
- British English: /ˈfæm(ɪ)li/