Tribe

How to spell tribe

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tribe

What does tribe mean?

1. nounA group of people united by family, ancestry, culture, or a shared way of life.

Tribe in a sentence

• The researcher spent two years living with a remote tribe in the highlands.

• Each tribe in the region had its own language and customs.

Where does tribe come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin tribus, which named one of the original divisions of the Roman people; tradition held that there were three such groups, so many scholars have linked the word to tres, meaning 'three', though that connection is not certain. In Roman usage the tribus became an administrative and voting unit, and the related word tribute (a payment made to the state) grew from the same family. English borrowed tribe in the 1200s and 1300s, partly through Old French and partly straight from Latin, first applying it to the twelve divisions of the people of Israel before it broadened to mean any social group bound by kinship or common descent. The modern senses, ranging from anthropology to casual talk of a close group sharing tastes, all rest on that idea of a people set apart as one unit. The spelling stays simple: the Latin tribus loses its ending and gains a silent final 'e' in English.

How the word is built

• trib- (from Latin tribus: one of the divisions of the Roman people)
• silent -e