family

noun families

1. countable, uncountable A group of people who are closely related to one another (by blood, marriage or adoption); kin; in particular, a set of parents and their children; an immediate family. Our family lives in town.
2. collective, countable, uncountable A group of related animals, usually a mother and offspring, a mating pair or larger lineages in some species.
3. countable, uncountable An extended family: a group of people who are related to one another by blood or marriage.
4. countable, uncountable A nuclear family: a mother and father who are married and cohabiting and their child or children. The cultural struggle is for the survival of family values against all manner of atheistic amorality.
5. uncountable Members of one's family collectively. I have a lot of family in Australia.
6. countable, uncountable A (close-knit) group of people related by blood, friendship, marriage, law, or custom, especially if they live or work together. crime family, Mafia family
7. slang, uncountable The gay community. […]This is not your hallmark im Ames, Iowa. And there is “family” working there . . . no radar like gaydar, I always say.
8. uncountable Lineage, especially honorable or noble lineage. Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about that she had not even 'family'; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that perhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more.
9. countable, uncountable Any group or aggregation of things classed together as kindred or related from possessing in common characteristics which distinguish them from other things of the same order. Doliracetam is a drug from the racetam family.
10. countable, uncountable A category in the classification of organisms, ranking below order and above genus; a taxon at that rank. Magnolias belong to the family Magnoliaceae.
11. countable A collection of sets, especially of subsets of a given set. Let #92;mathcalF be a family of subsets over S.
12. countable, uncountable A group of instruments having the same basic method of tone production. the brass family;  the violin family
13. countable, uncountable A group of languages believed to have descended from the same ancestral language. the Indo-European family

Similar: flesh and blood, kin, kinfolk, fam, class

adjective

1. not comparable Suitable for children and adults. It's not good for a date, it's a family restaurant.
2. not comparable, slang Homosexual. I knew he was family when I first met him.

proper noun