Tribal
adj, noun
adj, noun ·2 syllables ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
Noun
- 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."
Adjective
- 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"
Adjective
- 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.