Tribals

Part of speech: adjective, noun

Definitions

1. A group of individuals who share a common cultural identity based on ancestry and the customs of a particular community
2. Members of diverse societal units that are often linked by shared traditions, languages, and social structures
3. People belonging to distinct ethnic communities that often maintain traditional practices and social organization separate from broader society

Etymology: "Tribals" is simply the plural of "tribal," used as a noun for members of tribal peoples, and as an adjective it is a plural form only in that noun sense. The adjective "tribal" comes from "tribe" plus the suffix "-al," and it first appears in English in the 1630s. Its Latin ancestor is "tribalis," a learned adjective built on the Latin "tribus," the word for one of the divisions of the early Roman people. The most striking twist lies in the later scientific sense. In the nineteenth century, some writers borrowed the German term "Stammesgeschichte," meaning the history of a stock or lineage, and rendered it too literally as "tribal history." The German "Stamm" is ordinarily translated as "tribe" only when it refers to an ethnographic group, so this English usage was a translator's overreach that stuck in certain scholarly circles.

Synonyms: indigenous, native, ethnic, aboriginal, traditional

Antonyms: modern, urban, civilized