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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Totem \To"tem\, noun [Massachusetts Indian wutohtimoin that to which a person or place belongs.]
1. A rude picture, as of a bird, beast, or the like, used by the North American Indians as a symbolic designation, as of a family or a clan; also, the object or animal itself, considered as an symbol of the family.
And they painted on the grave posts Of the graves, yet unforgotten, Each his own ancestral totem Each the symbol of his household; Figures of the bear and reindeer, Of the turtle, crane, and beaver. --Longfellow.
The totem, the clan deity, the beast or bird who in some supernatural way attends to the clan and watches over it. --Bagehot.
2. Anything which serves as a venerated or mystic symbol or emblem. [PJC]
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
totem
noun
1: a clan identified by their kinship to a common totemic object
2: emblem consisting of an object such as an animal or plant; serves as the symbol of a family or clan (especially among American Indians)
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
100 Moby Thesaurus words for "totem": allegory, ancestral spirits, angel, animal kingdom, ashram, attendant godling, blood, body, breed, brood, caste, charactery, cipher, clan, class, colony, commonwealth, commune, community, control, conventional symbol, daemon, deme, demon, economic class, emblem, endogamous group, extended family, fairy godmother, familiar, familiar spirit, family, folk, genius, genius domus, genius loci, gens, good angel, good genius, guardian, guardian angel, guardian spirit, guide, house, household gods, iconology, ideogram, invisible helper, kind, kinship group, lares and penates, lares compitales, lares familiaris, lares permarini, lares praestites, lares viales, line, lineage, logogram, logotype, love knot, manes, matriclan, ministering angel, moiety, nation, nuclear family, numen, order, patriclan, penates, people, phratria, phratry, phyle, pictogram, plant kingdom, race, sept, settlement, social class, society, special providence, species, stem, stirps, stock, strain, subcaste, symbol, symbolic system, symbolism, symbolization, symbology, token, totem pole, tribe, tutelar god, tutelary, type
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