subfamily
Americannoun
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Biology. a category of related genera within a family.
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Linguistics. (in the classification of related languages within a family) a category of a higher order than a branch.
noun
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biology a taxonomic group that is a subdivision of a family
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any analogous subdivision, as of a family of languages
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of subfamily
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.
See Examples For:
The new findings challenge that view, offering strong evidence that the Podonominae subfamily most likely began in the Southern Hemisphere and later expanded worldwide.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 15, 2025
Some hematophages are well-known: For example, vampire bats in the subfamily Desmodontinae helped inspire the legendary monsters that bear their name and no one can forget blood-sucking mosquitoes and leeches.
From Salon ● Oct. 31, 2024
Aleocharinae, with about 17,000 known species, is the largest subfamily within the Staphylinidae family.
From Scientific American ● Sep. 27, 2023
It describes a large and geographically widespread subfamily of African languages that make up part of the larger Niger-Congo language family.
From Textbooks ● Apr. 19, 2023
At the one extreme, Mandarin and its relatives, which constitute the Chinese subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan language family, are distributed continuously from North to South China.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
The subfamilies are major subdivisions of the family, while the tribes and subtribe can contain one or more of genera, which is the classification level just above the species.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 3, 2024
The researchers also detected pupal ‘milk’ in species from each of the five biggest ant subfamilies, suggesting that it could play a part in the evolution of ant social structures.
From Scientific American ● Dec. 2, 2022
Fifty-five subfamilies of kinases evolved before yeast diverged from other eukaryotes, but the tyrosine kinases evolved after yeast diverged.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022
Columns show pir subfamilies and rows show species.
From Nature ● Jan. 24, 2017
But one of those subfamilies, termed Malayo-Polynesian, comprises 945 of those 959 languages and covers almost the entire geographic range of the Austronesian family.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
