Tribal
adj, noun ·2 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A design or image that has been influenced by indigenous peoples; especially such a tattoo.
- 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."
- 1 Of or relating to tribes.
"social order through tribal law"
- 2 Based on or organized according to tribes.
"a tribal society"
- 3 Phylogenic. historical, rare
"tribal history"
- 4 Incorporating designs or styles typical of an indigenous people.
"tribal techno music"
- 1 relating to or characteristic of a tribe wordnet
Example
More examples"Imagine, for the sake of argument, a tribal group in which mother-son incest was countenanced."
Etymology
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.
Related phrases
More for "tribal"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.