Word.ws English Dictionary

stepfamily

stepfamily noun: any family having one or more stepchildren or stepparents.

Noun

stepfamily (plural stepfamilies)

  1. Any family having one or more stepchildren or stepparents.
    • Researchers are finding that the incidence of violence and abuse is vastly greater in stepfamilies than in traditional families in which the children are biologically related to both parents and to one other.1998 October 2, Jane E. Brody, “Genetic Ties May Be Factor In Violence in Stepfamilies”, in The New York Times
    • Meanwhile, thanks to the huge number of second marriages, a third of all Americans are part of a stepfamily.2006 May 17, Po Bronson, “Are Stepparents Real Parents?”, in Time, archived from the original on 25 Dec 2024
  2. The family of one's stepfather or stepmother; those immediate family members not related by blood.

Synonyms of stepfamily

Forms of stepfamily

pluralstepfamilies
alternative formstep family

Origin of stepfamily

From step- + family.

Questions about stepfamily

What does stepfamily mean?
Stepfamily means any family having one or more stepchildren or stepparents.
What part of speech is stepfamily?
Stepfamily is a noun.
What is the plural of stepfamily?
The plural of stepfamily is stepfamilies.

Words near stepfamily in the dictionary

  1. stepdaughter
  2. stepdaughters
  3. stepdown
  4. stepdowns
  5. stepfamilies
  6. stepfamily
  7. stepfather
  8. stepfather-in-law
  9. stepfatherhood
  10. stepfatherly
  11. stepfathers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stepfamily (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.

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