clan

/klæn/

/klæn/

Other forms: clans

A clan is an extended family. Your clan might include your parents and siblings, but also your cousins and second cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents.

Families that are related to each other, whether through marriage or as distant cousins, are members of the same clan. If you get together with a big family group every summer, you can say you vacation with your clan. In Scotland, a person's clan has a specific name, like "clan MacLachlan." The word comes from the Gaelic clann, "family" or "offspring," with the Latin root planta, "offshoot."

Definitions of clan

1. noun

   group of people related by blood or marriage
   synonyms: kin, kin group, kindred, kinship group, tribe

   types:

   mishpachah, mishpocha

   (Yiddish) the entire family network of relatives by blood or marriage (and sometimes close friends)

   family, family unit

   primary social group; parents and children

   folks

   your parents

   family tree, genealogy

   successive generations of kin

   totem

   a clan or tribe identified by their kinship to a common totemic object

   Tribes of Israel, Twelve Tribes of Israel

   twelve kin groups of ancient Israel each traditionally descended from one of the twelve sons of Jacob

   couple, match, mates

   a pair of people who live together

   man and wife, marriage, married couple

   two people who are married to each other

   ancestry, blood, blood line, bloodline, descent, line, line of descent, lineage, origin, parentage, pedigree, stemma, stock

   the lineage of an individual

   Lost Tribes

   the ten Tribes of Israel that were deported into captivity in Assyria around 720 BC (leaving only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin)

   type of:

   social group

   people sharing some social relation