Link Centre Dictionary

tribal

tri·bal

UK/ˈtɹaɪbəl/ US/ˈtraɪbʌl/ fairly common

adjective

1.

relating to or characteristic of a tribe

  • “tribal customs”

Origin

From Latin tribālis. By surface analysis, tribe + -al, first attested in the 1630s. The specific adjectival sense under the defunct theory of recapitulation derives from tribal history as an overly literal learned borrowing from German Stammesgeschichte; ordinarily, Stamm would only be translated as tribe when used in its ethnographic sense.

Phrases

  • tribal chief
  • tribal house
  • tribal tattoo

Related words

Word family

Pertaining to

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.