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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

familial.

Of or pertaining to a human family.

8 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/fəˈmɪljəl/General-American, Received-Pronunciation
  1. Of or pertaining to a human family.

    not-comparable
    Mark had to leave work due to familial obligations.
  2. Pertaining to a taxon at the rank of family.

    not-comparable
    Having milky latex is a familial characteristic of Apocynaceae.
  3. Of or pertaining to any grouping of things referred to as a family.

    not-comparable
    "Grandfather", "mother", and "brother" are some English familial terms.
  4. Inherited.

    not-comparable
    fatal familial insomnia
Where this word comes from

From French familial (“relating to a family; familial”), from Latin familia (“family (in the sense of the slaves working for a household); household”) (from famulus (“servant; slave”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dʰh₁-m-eló-, from *dʰeh₁- (“to do, place, put”)) + French -al (adjective-forming suffix) (from Latin -ālis, from Proto-Indo-European *-li-). By surface analysis, family + -al. Piecewise doublet of familiar.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.