Emily Dickinson Lexicon

TRIBE, n. [W. trev; Gael. treabh; Sax. thorpe, D. dorp, G. dorf; Sw. and Dan. torp, a hamlet or village; L. tribus. We have tribe from the last. In Welsh, the word signifies a dwelling place, homestead, hamlet, or town, as does the Sax. thorpe. The Sax. træf is a tent; Russ. derevni, an estate, a hamlet. From the sense of house, the word came to signify a family, a race of descendants from one progenitor, who originally settled round him and formed a village.]

1. A family, race, or series of generations, descending from the same progenitor, and kept distinct, as in the case of the twelve tribes of Israel, descended from the twelve sons of Jacob.
2. A division, class, or distinct portion of people, from whatever canse that distinction may have originated. The city of Athens was divided into ten tribes. Rome was originally divided into three tribes; afterward the people were distributed into thirty tribes, and afterward into thirty-five. Roman Hist.
3. A number of things having certain characters or resemblances in common; as, a tribe of plants; a tribe of animals. Linnæus distributed the vegetable kingdom into three tribes, viz. monocotyledonous, dicotyledonous, and acotyledonous plants, and these he subdivided into gentes or nations. Martyn. By recent naturalists, tribe has been used for a division of animals or vegetables, intermediate between order and genus. Cuvier divides his orders into families, and his families into tribes, including under the latter one or more genera. Leach, in his arrangement of insects, makes his tribes, on the contrary, the primary subdivisions of his orders, and his families subordinate to them, and immediately including the genera. Cuvier. Ed. Encyc. Tribes of plants, in gardening, are such us are related to each other by some natural affinity or resemblance; as by their duration, the annual, biennial, and perennial tribes; by their roots, as the bulbous, tuberous, and fibrous-rooted tribes; by the loss or retention of their leaves, as the deciduous and evergreen tribes; by their fruits and seeds, as the leguminous, bacciferous, coniferous, nuciferous, and pomiferous tribes &c. Cyc.
4. A division; a number considered collectively.
5. A nation of savages; a body of rude people united under one leader or government; as, the tribes of the six nations, the Seneca tribe in America.
6. A number of persons of any character or profession; in contempt; as, the scribbling tribe. Roscommon.