clan
UK/klæn/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
British/klan/
clan noun: a group of people all descended from a common ancestor, in fact or belief, especially when the exact genealogies are not known.
Noun
clan (plural clans)
- A group of people all descended from a common ancestor, in fact or belief, especially when the exact genealogies are not known.
- A traditional social group of families in the Scottish Highlands having a common hereditary chieftain.
- Any group defined by family ties with some sort of political unity.
- Holonym: nation
- Near-synonym: canton (uncommon outside of certain dialects)
- Synonyms:
- canton
- traditional main matrilineal subunit of the Minangkabau people (suku) esp. in Negeri Sembilan
- A group of players who habitually play on the same team in multiplayer games.
- A group of badgers.
- if the clan of badgers next door isn't marking its boundaries2017, Stephan Price, Thinking Through Badgers, Vernon Press, page 246
- it might support a clan of badgers willing to share, although not necessarily to compromise, their individual food security to gain the advantage of reduced food defence costs.2022, David Macdonald, Chris Newman, The Badgers of Wytham Woods
- Synonyms:
- cete
clan meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
clan in Hindi
- group having common ancestor
- खानदान khāndān, वंश vañś
clan in Tamil
- பொது முன்னோனை உடைய கூட்டுக்குழு, குடும்பக் குழு, குலம்
clan in Marathi
- group having common ancestor
- कूळ kūḷ
- group of players who habitually play on the same team in multiplayer games
- क्लॅन klĕn
clan in Urdu
- برادری, کنبہ, قبیلہ
More languagesFewer languages
- clan in Bengali
- গণ gon
- clan in Telugu
- వంశం
- clan in Malayalam
- കുലം kulaṁ, കുടി kuṭi
- clan in Kannada
- ಗೋತ್ರ gōtra
- clan in Punjabi
- ਗੋਤ got, گوت got
- clan in Sanskrit
- कुल kúla
- clan in Nepali
- कुल kul
- clan in Pashto
- خېل xel
- clan in Tagalog
- angkan
- clan in Arabic
- عَشِيرَة ʕašīra
- clan in Indonesian
- klan
- clan in Persian
- ویس vis, طایفه tâyefe, قبیله qabile
- clan in Thai
- โคตร kôot
- clan in Vietnamese
- thị tộc
Examples of clan in a sentence
- We've never even seen a flutter in the loyalty of the MacKenzie clan.
- And our deepthroaters intimate that Max was friendly with many pirate clans.
- They belong to the “Ceusi” mafia clan, a family tied to Catania’s dominant Santopaula clan.
Synonyms of clan
Forms of clan
| plural | clans |
|---|
Origin of clan
Borrowed from Irish clann (“offspring, children of the family”) and Scottish Gaelic clann, both from Old Irish cland, borrowed from Old Welsh plant, itself borrowed from Latin planta (“shoot, offspring”). Doublet of plant and planta.
Words formed from clan
Phrases with clan
Words that rhyme with clan
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- ban
- Cheyenne
- Longshan
- Nanshan
- plan
- an
- gan
- Gushan
- han
- Hongshan
- mann
- nan
- stan
- tan
- unman
- Baoshan
- Dongshan
- flan
- Heshan
- Jinshan
- langshan
- marzipan
- panne
- Qishan
- ran
- rattan
- bantustan
- began
- chan
- Fengshan
- Fran
- Guanshan
- Hengshan
- Huangshan
- Huishan
- japan
- Lausanne
- Lianshan
- Lushan
- Marianne
- Pingshan
- scran
- sedan
- shan
- than
- trapan
- trepan
- Xi'an
Questions about clan
- What does clan mean?
- Clan means a group of people all descended from a common ancestor, in fact or belief, especially when the exact genealogies are not known.
- What is clan in Hindi?
- Clan in Hindi is खानदान (khāndān), वंश (vañś). See Clan meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is clan?
- Clan is a noun.
- How do you pronounce clan?
- Clan is pronounced /klæn/ (UK).
- What is the plural of clan?
- The plural of clan is clans.
Words near clan in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: clan (page history and authors); clan (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); clan (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); গণ (Bengali) (page history and authors); clan (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); കുടി (Malayalam) (page history and authors); ಗೋತ್ರ (Kannada) (page history and authors); कुल (Sanskrit) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-clan.ogg.
Cite this entry: “clan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/clan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.