family groupings

Noun

family grouping (countable and uncountable, plural family groupings)

1. (countable) The method in which individuals are grouped together into families that live together.
   • This close family grouping may be a fairly recent development, for Lang and Tastevin (1937, p. 70) report that the Mwila once lived in villages of fifteen or twenty families consisting of approximately one hundred people and that, at the time they were writing, five or six families still grouped...1963, Alvin W. Urquhart, Patterns of Settlement and Subsistence in Southwestern Angola
2. (countable) A group of individuals who are related by blood and/or by marriage.
   • Indeed, viewing Jewish women by family formation and moving from the more mature family groupings to the youngest family groupings, the data indicate a dramatic decline in employment in clerical and technical capacities and a corresponding increase in those employed in professional capacities.1994, Steven Bayme, Gladys Rosen, The Jewish Family and Jewish Continuity, →ISBN, page 16
3. (countable) A group of family members who are posed together.
   • In November of 1978, my mother-in-law gave me a box of old photos, one of which was a family grouping taken ca. 1892.1997, Henry Z. Jones, More Psychic Roots, →ISBN
4. (countable) A taxonomic grouping at the family level.
   • To a large extent the grouping is built up from partially facial characters, and I am not at all surprised to find Palæntologists offering suggestions, or making re-arrangements of the family grouping. The family Cerioporidæ is particularly obnoxious, for there is not the least affinity between the...1887, Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society - Volume 9, page 353
5. (countable) A group of related items.
   • Just as an atom is a grouping of sub-atomic particles, and an organ or organism is a family grouping of cells, so also is 'the soul' a family grouping of selves.2007, Peter Wilberg, Tantric Wisdom for Today's World - The New Yoga of Awareness, →ISBN
6. (uncountable) The strategy of putting related inventory items together.
   • Effective item placement can often be achieved through tying both the inventory stratification and family grouping approaches together.2011, Max Muller, Essentials of Inventory Management, →ISBN, page 79

See all 7 meanings of family grouping