tribe
- noun
- /traɪb/
- Specialized
- So every tribe is geographically distributed across all of Attica in this way.
- belong to the tribe
- tribe members
Examples
-
All three of these tribes.
Academic text (2018) -
As for the southern tribes, they are quicker to celebrate a wedding to choose sides in the war.
-
Benji was telling me about this documentary he saw about a tribe of monkeys.
-
As a result, the Yamnayas and related tribes were far more mobile than most and controlled a larger territory than their numbers might have suggested.
Fiction book (1994) -
That's very, very rare since the tribe is now extinct.
-
I was watching this documentary on cable about this tribe of monkeys in Somalia.
-
All this is assuming females tolerated males in the tribe at all.
Blog text (24) -
The old males in Imo's tribe of Japanese macaques never did learn to wash their food; it was young colleagues who learned.
Academic text (1995) -
We had treated 1,130 people from three tribes and were transporting four patients, including a baby, to Nairobi, Kenya, for surgery.
Blog text (13) -
Scientists have classified the new species of frog into a distinct tribe known for its unique mating rituals.
Idioms
- Informal
To discover a group of people who share your interests and make you feel at home
Compounds
A group of people who live by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants
- Specialized
A group of animals that includes water buffalo and their close relatives
How Specific
Surface Forms
Etymology
Tribe is also used in biology and comes from the old Latin tribus 'division', so scientists borrowed the word to name a group of related plants or animals that sits between larger and smaller categories. This use keeps the basic idea of a 'group'.