family tree

noun

"family-tree" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“family tree” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
11
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A diagrammatic representation of a pedigree, illustrating the connections between a person's ancestors, offspring and other relatives.

Corpus desk

Index EN-family-tree · family tree · English

family tree · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 11 letters
  • VOW-5 5 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "F" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for family tree
PropertyValue
Headwordfamily tree
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters11
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “family tree” in English

family treefalls outside the top-100,000 ranked English words, the long-tail zone of technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary, exactly where readers second-guess spellings most.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

family tree is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 5 senses are on record.

No misspelling variants are generated for family tree in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

This entry carries no recorded etymology, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is family tree, spelled F-A-M-I-L-Y- -T-R-E-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    A diagrammatic representation of a pedigree, illustrating the connections between a person's ancestors, offspring and other relatives.
  2. 2
    The totality of someone's ancestors and offspring.
  3. 3
    A model or diagram showing the relationships and evolution of specified languages over time.
  4. 4
    A grafting technique involving the joining of different varieties of plants onto a single tree or plant.
  5. 5
    A data structure that organizes resources or machines in a distributed system, consisting of nodes connected by edges, in which each node may also contain a subnode.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how family tree appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Heredity and environment are not the absolute arbiters of what will be, as Jesus' genealogy details in the first chapter of Matthew's Gospel. As Gardner Taylor, an African-American preacher in Brooklyn, noted, Rahab the prostitute is in the family tree of Jesus Christ.
  2. We're from the family tree of old school hip-hop / Kick off your shoes and relax your socks

This word in other languages

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "family tree"?
"family tree" is spelled F-A-M-I-L-Y- -T-R-E-E.
What does "family tree" mean?
As a noun, "family tree" means: A diagrammatic representation of a pedigree, illustrating the connections between a person's ancestors, offspring and other relatives.
What language does "family tree" come from?
"family tree" is a English word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list