family

Definition

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.

Etymology

From Late Middle English famylye, from Latin familia (“a household”). Displaced native Old English hīred. Doublet of familia.

Example Sentences

• "Our family lives in town."
• "To Jane, he could be only a man whose proposals she had refused, and whose merit she had undervalued; but to her own more extensive information, he was the person, to whom the whole family were indebted for the first of benefits, and whom she regarded herself with an interest, if not quite so tender, at least as reasonable and just, as what Jane felt for Bingley."
• "Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family perhaps at a critical moment, when the family is just assuming the robes of respectability:[…]it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off."

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