Tribal

adj, noun

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Of or relating to tribes.

    "social order through tribal law"

  2. 2
    Based on or organized according to tribes.

    "a tribal society"

  3. 3
    Phylogenic. historical, rare

    "tribal history"

  4. 4
    Incorporating designs or styles typical of an indigenous people.

    "tribal techno music"

Adjective
  1. 1
    relating to or characteristic of a tribe wordnet
Noun
  1. 1
    A design or image that has been influenced by indigenous peoples; especially such a tattoo.
  2. 2
    A member of a tribe. India

    "This right had been accepted by relative tribals but misobeyed and effaced by non-tribals and foreign peasants."

Etymology

Etymology 1

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.

Etymology 2

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.

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