tribal
adjectivenouncommon in dialogue
- United Kingdom//ˈtɹaɪbəl//
Of or relating to tribes.
adjective
- 1
Of or relating to tribes.
social order through tribal law
‘What has he done?’ ‘Oh, killed a few natives. That wouldn’t count so much if it was all ‘tribal’; but he’s ‘gone cheeky’ and threatens wholesale murder. My job is to grab him before he slaughters more.’
- 2
Based on or organized according to tribes.
a tribal society
- 3
historicalPhylogenic.
tribal history
- 4
Incorporating designs or styles typical of an indigenous people.
tribal techno music
a purse with a tribal design
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.
noun
- 1
A design or image that has been influenced by indigenous peoples; especially such a tattoo.
- 2
A member of a tribe.
This right had been accepted by relative tribals but misobeyed and effaced by non-tribals and foreign peasants.
[…] the legendary Adivasi leader Jaipal Singh Munda who came to represent the tribals not just of his native plateau, but also of all of India […]
Forms
- plural
- tribals
- comparative
- more tribal
- superlative
- most tribal