tribe

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A unit of sociopolitical organization consisting of a number of families, clans, or other groups who share a common ancestry and culture and among whom leadership is typically neither formalized nor permanent.
2. n. A political, ethnic, or ancestral division of ancient states and cultures, especially:
3. n. Any of the three divisions of the ancient Romans, namely, the Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan.
4. n. Any of the 12 divisions of ancient Israel.
5. n. A phyle of ancient Greece.
6. n. A group of people sharing an occupation, interest, or habit: a tribe of graduate students.
7. n. Informal A large family.
8. n. Biology A taxonomic category placed between a subfamily and a genus or between a suborder and a family and usually containing several genera.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In Roman history, one of the three patrician orders, or original political divisions of the people of ancient Rome, the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres, representing respectively, according to tradition, the separate Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan settlements, having at their union equal representation in the senate, and retaining their distinctive names for several centuries.
2. n. Any one of the similar divisions of a race or nation common in antiquity, whether of natural or of political origin: as, the tribes (φυλαι) of Athens. Ethnical tribes among the ancients regarded themselves as enlarged families, and generally bore the name of some real or supposed common progenitor. Such were the twelve tribes of the Israelites, the tribes of the Dorians and other Greek races, etc. The thirty (and afterward more) tribes into which the plebeians in and around Rome were divided, after the formation of the patrician tribes, were based on locality; and tribes nearly corresponding to castes have in some instances been determined by occupation.
3. n. Specifically, a division of a barbarous race of people, usually distinguishable in some way from their congeners, united into a community under a recognized head or chief, ruling either independently or subordinately. In general the tribe, as it still exists among the American Indians and many African and Asiatic races, is the earliest form of political organization, nations being ultimately constituted by their gradual amalgamation and loss of identity in the progress of civilization.
4. n. Any class or body of persons taken collectively; any aggregate of individuals of a kind, either as a united body or as distinguished by some common characteristic or occupation.
5. n. A family of cattle having a common female ancestor. Tribes of cattle are particular strains, taking their names usually from some particular cow appearing in the pedigrees, as the Princess or Duchess tribes of shorthorns. There is no absolute rule for naming a tribe, but it descends through the female line.
6. n. In zoology and botany, a classificatory group of uncertain taxonomic rank, above a genus, and usually below an order; loosely, any group or series of animals: as, the furry, feathery, or finny tribes; the cat tribe. Linnæus distributed the vegetable kingdom into three tribes, namely monocotyledonous, dicotyledonous, and acotyledonous plants, and these he subdivided into gentes or nations. By other naturalists tribe has been used for a division of animals or plants intermediate between order and genus. In botany this is the current and a very common use, the tribe standing below the suborder where that division is present. Cuvier divided his orders into families, and his families into tribes, including under the latter one or more genera.
7. To distribute into tribes or classes.

Wiktionary

1. n. A socially, ethnically, and politically cohesive group of people.
2. n. anthropology A society larger than a band but smaller than a state.
3. n. The collective noun for various animals.
4. n. taxonomy A hierarchal rank between family and genus.
5. v. transitive To distribute into tribes or classes; to categorize.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A family, race, or series of generations, descending from the same progenitor, and kept distinct, as in the case of the twelve tribes of Israel, descended from the twelve sons of Jacob.
2. n. (Bot.) A number of species or genera having certain structural characteristics in common.
3. n. A nation of savages or uncivilized people; a body of rude people united under one leader or government.
4. n. A division, class, or distinct portion of a people, from whatever cause that distinction may have originated.
5. n. (Stock Breeding) A family of animals descended from some particular female progenitor, through the female line.
6. v. rare To distribute into tribes or classes.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. (biology) a taxonomic category between a genus and a subfamily
2. n. a social division of (usually preliterate) people
3. n. a federation (as of American Indians)
4. n. group of people related by blood or marriage