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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Folk \Folk\ (f[=o]k), Folks \Folks\ (f[=o]ks), noun collect. & pl. [AS. folc; akin to D. volk, OS. & OHG. folk, G. volk, Icel. f[=o]lk, Sw. & Dan. folk, Lith. pulkas crowd, and perh. to E. follow.]
1. (Eng. Hist.) In Anglo-Saxon times, the people of a group of townships or villages; a community; a tribe. [Obs.]
The organization of each folk, as such, sprang mainly from war. --J. R. Green.
2. People in general, or a separate class of people; -- generally used in the plural form, and often with a qualifying adjective; as, the old folks; poor folks. [Colloq.]
In winter's tedious nights, sit by the fire With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales. --Shak.
3. The persons of one's own family; as, our folks are all well. [Colloq. New Eng.] --Bartlett.
{Folk song}, one of a class of songs long popular with the common people.
{Folk speech}, the speech of the common people, as distinguished from that of the educated class.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
folk
noun
1: people in general; "they're just country folk"; "the common people determine the group character and preserve its customs from one generation to the next" [syn: {common people}]
2: a social division of (usually preliterate) people [syn: {tribe}]
3: people descended from a common ancestor; "his family has lived in Massachusetts since the Mayflower" [syn: {family}, {family line}, {kinfolk}, {kinsfolk}, {sept}, {phratry}]
4: the traditional and typically anonymous music that is an expression of the life of people in a community [syn: {folk music}, {ethnic music}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
103 Moby Thesaurus words for "folk": Everyman, John Doe, Public, acknowledged, admitted, animal kingdom, blood, body politic, breed, brood, citizenry, clan, class, common man, commonwealth, community, community at large, constituency, conventional, cultural community, customary, deme, dwellers, established, estate, ethnic group, everybody, everyman, everyone, everywoman, family, fixed, folks, general public, gens, gentry, habitancy, hallowed, handed down, heroic, hoary, house, household, immemorial, inhabitants, inveterate, kind, kindred, legendary, line, lineage, linguistic community, long-established, long-standing, matriclan, men, menage, mythological, nation, nationality, of long standing, of the folk, oral, order, patriclan, people, people at large, people in general, persons, phratry, phyle, plant kingdom, polity, populace, population, prescriptive, public, race, received, recognized, rooted, sept, society, species, speech community, state, stem, stirps, stock, strain, time-honored, totem, traditional, tribe, tried and true, true-blue, understood, unwritten, venerable, whole people, world, worshipful, you and me
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Definitions retrieved from local copies of the freely distributed DICT client/server software and databases. Click here for database copyright information. - KM |