Word.ws English Dictionary

folkways

folkways is the plural of folkway.

Meaning of folkway

Noun

folkway (plural folkways)

  1. (in plural, often) A belief or custom common to members of a culture or society.
    • He [Van Wyck Brooks] had opposed to the folkways the standard of the humanistic life. It was needful that he continue to affirm that standard by making it visible in his own spiritual manner, by living boldly, dangerously, in the fashion of the artist, by giving himself to life as men in America...1924, Paul Rosenfeld, “Van Wyck Brooks”, in Port of New York: Essays on Fourteen American Moderns, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, →OCLC, section V, page 53

Forms of folkways

alternative formfolk ways
alternative formfolk-ways

Questions about folkways

What is folkways the plural of?
Folkways is the plural of folkway.

Words near folkways in the dictionary

  1. folktronic
  2. folktronica
  3. folktune
  4. folktunes
  5. folkway
  6. folkways
  7. folkweave
  8. folky
  9. foll
  10. Folland
  11. Follansbee

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: folkways (page history and authors); folkway (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:

Cite this entry: “folkways.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/folkways. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.