Family

How to spell family

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce family

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does family mean?

1. nounA group of people related by blood, marriage, or adoption, especially parents and their children.
2. nounA group of related things classified together, such as in biology or linguistics.

Family in a sentence

• The whole family gathered for the holiday dinner.

• The lion belongs to the cat family of mammals.

• Buying a larger car made sense once the family grew.

• These languages all come from the same family of tongues.

Where does family come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin familia, which meant a household, including not only blood relations but also the servants and slaves who lived under one roof. That word was built on famulus, meaning a household servant or attendant, so the earliest sense was much broader than our modern idea of parents and children. English borrowed it in the 1400s, at first referring to the servants of a great house or to the whole body of people in a household. Only later did the meaning narrow to the group of relatives we mean today. A useful spelling reminder is that hidden second syllable: the word is fam-i-ly, three syllables, and the middle 'i' is easy to swallow in speech and then drop in writing.

How the word is built

• famil- (from Latin familia: household)
• -y (noun suffix)