Translate family | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish Definition of family
noun (plural families)
1 [treated as singular or plural] a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household. a group of people related to one another by blood or marriage:friends and family can provide support the children of a person or couple:she has the sole responsibility for a large family a person or people related to one and so to be treated with a special loyalty or intimacy:I could not turn him away, for he was family a group of people united in criminal activity. Biology a principal taxonomic category that ranks above genus and below order, usually ending in -idae (in zoology) or -aceae (in botany). a group of objects united by a significant shared characteristic. Mathematics a group of curves or surfaces obtained by varying the value of a constant in the equation generating them.
2all the descendants of a common ancestor:the house has been owned by the same family for 300 years a race or group of peoples from a common stock. all the languages ultimately derived from a particular early language, regarded as a group:the Austronesian language family
adjective
[attributive] designed to be suitable for children as well as adults:a family newspaper
