tribal

tribal — adjective

1. describing a community whose members share the same language, culture, and tradi

1.adjectiveB1
Definition

describing a community whose members share the same language, culture, and traditions, or relating to the customs and way of life of such a community

Example

The tribal council voted to protect the sacred forest from mining.

Jin learned the tribal dances his grandmother had performed as a child.

collocation: tribal dances / tribal customs / tribal languages

Common collocations
  • tribal council
  • tribal elder
  • tribal leader
  • tribal land
  • tribal community
  • tribal art
  • tribal dance
  • tribal custom
  • tribal language
  • tribal culture
  • tribal tradition
  • tribal chief
  • tribal warfare
  • tribal identity
  • tribal society
Synonyms
  • ethnic

    broader term — refers to any shared cultural identity, not just societies organized in tribes

  • indigenous

    emphasizes being the original inhabitants of a region rather than the internal structure of a tribal group

  • ancestral

    focuses on inheritance from earlier generations rather than social organization

Antonyms
  • modern

    describes contemporary urban society rather than traditional tribal structures

  • urban

    relates to city life, the opposite of the rural or remote settings where tribes typically live

Usage Note

Frequently placed before a noun (tribal leader, tribal land, tribal art). In modern media, a separate metaphorical use has emerged meaning 'showing strong loyalty to one group with hostility toward outsiders' — that use is considered informal and is not covered by this sense.

Common Mistakes

The tribal live in small villages.
The tribal people live in small villages.
In this sense, tribal is an adjective; it must modify a noun such as 'people,' 'community,' or 'group.'

tribal — noun

Word family

  • tribe
    nounB1
  • tribalism
    nounC1
  • tribalist
    nounC2
  • intertribal
    adjectiveC2

Synonym discussion

Sense: adjective/1

Tribal specifically refers to people organized as tribes — groups that share a common language, culture, and traditional leadership structure such as elders or chiefs. Ethnic is a broader term describing any group that shares a cultural background, including groups in modern cities whose members may never meet face to face. Indigenous emphasizes being the original inhabitants of a region, often in contrast to later colonizers or settlers. For example, the Maori of New Zealand are both indigenous (first inhabitants) and tribal (organized in iwi, or tribes). Korean Americans are an ethnic group but are neither indigenous to the United States nor organized as a tribe. Use tribal when the key idea is clan-based social organization, indigenous when the key idea is original occupation of land, and ethnic when the key idea is shared cultural heritage regardless of social structure.

tribal ↗ethnic ↗indigenous ↗

Common collocations

Adverbs

  • traditionally tribal
  • purely tribal
  • strictly tribal

Phrases

  • tribal in nature
  • tribal by tradition

Etymology

LatinEnglish

Tribal comes from the Latin word tribus, which originally meant one of the three divisions of the Roman people. Over time the sense widened to mean any group of families or communities with a shared ancestor. The English adjective tribal appeared in the 1600s, and the noun use for 'member of an indigenous Indian community' developed during the British colonial period in South Asia.