tribal
/ˈtɹaɪbəl/ adjective, noun
Forms tribals
- adjective Of or relating to tribes. “social order through tribal law”
- adjective Based on or organized according to tribes. “a tribal society”
- adjective (historical, biology, theory of recapitulation, rare) Phylogenic. “tribal history”
- adjective Incorporating designs or styles typical of an indigenous people. “tribal techno music”
- noun A design or image that has been influenced by indigenous peoples; especially such a tattoo.
- noun (India) A member of a tribe.
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.
Webster’s 1913
- adjective Of or pertaining to a tribe or tribes; as, a tribal scepter.
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “tribal”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details