tribal

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Relating to or typical of a tribe.

   The museum displays ancient tribal art and weapons.

2. 2
   adj

   Using designs or styles typical of an indigenous people.

   He has a tribal tattoo across his shoulder.

3. 3
   noun

   A member of a tribe.

   The forest is home to several groups of tribals.

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.

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