phratries
- plural of phratry.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The clans of the Aztecs, like those of many other Mexican tribes, were organized into four phratries; and this divided the city of Mexico, Aztec phratries. as the Spaniards at once remarked, into four quarters.
From The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest by Fiske, John
The phratry is mentioned by Homer as a military unit in that famous passage where Nestor advises Agamemnon: "Arrange the men by phratries and tribes so that phratry may assist phratry, and tribe the tribe."
From The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Engels, Friedrich
The difficulty of accounting for exogamy does not seem to have been overcome, and no attempt is made to explain the animal names of totem kins and phratries.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 10, Slice 2 "Fairbanks, Erastus" to "Fens" by Various
Later the original population was joined by other phratries, some of which, as the Asa, had lived in the cliff-houses of Tségi, or Canyon de Chelly, as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century.
From Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744 by Fewkes, Jesse Walter
As a matter of fact, the development of the entire Grecian mythology from the traditional old Aryan cult of nature was essentially due to the gentes and phratries and took place within them.
From The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Engels, Friedrich
