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Clannish   /klˈænɪʃ/   Listen
Clannish

adjective
1.
Characteristic of a clan especially in being unified.
2.
Befitting or characteristic of those who incline to social exclusiveness and who rebuff the advances of people considered inferior.  Synonyms: cliquish, clubby, snobbish, snobby.



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"Clannish" Quotes from Famous Books



... Commander Frendon to the crew. He made a distinct impression. Entirely bad. Veteran small-ship personnel in this war have shown themselves to be extremely clannish, at best, deriving their principal sense of security not from the strength of the fleet which they never see and rarely contact, but from their familiarity with and confidence in each other's capabilities. Now these men had a new CO ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald

... after dark. We may sum up the cheerful doctrine thus: All men become vampires, and the vampire spares none. And here we come face to face with a tempting inconsistency. For the whistling spirits are notoriously clannish; I understood them to wait upon and to enlighten kinsfolk only, and that the medium was always of the race of the communicating spirit. Here, then, we have the bonds of the family, on the one hand, severed at the hour of death; on ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... them you will always be the little boy who forgot to write profusive thanks for the half-a-crown they gave you when you first went to school. You can always tell the man or woman who live among their relatives. They possess no individuality, no "vision"; they are narrow, self-centred, pompous, clannish—with that clannishness which means only complete self-satisfaction with the clan. They take their mental and moral "cue" from the oldest generation among them. The younger members are, metaphorically speaking, patted ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... extinguished that nothing is more usual than to hear a Lowlander talk with complacency and even with pride of the most humiliating defeat that his ancestors ever underwent. It would be difficult to name any eminent man in whom national feeling and clannish feeling were stronger than in Sir Walter Scott. Yet when Sir Walter Scott mentioned Killiecrankie he seemed utterly to forget that he was a Saxon, that he was of the same blood and of the same speech ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to criticise "Waverley" as a whole, it is not easy to say whether we should try to put ourselves at the point of view of its first readers, or whether we should look at it from the vantage-ground of to-day. In 1811 the dead world of clannish localty was fresh in many memories. Scott's own usher had often spoken with a person who had seen Cromwell enter Edinburgh after Dunbar. He himself knew heroes of the Forty-five, and his friend Lady Louisa Stuart had been well acquainted ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... chairman of that line. He was then the locomotive chief, and renowned above all other things for maintaining discipline among his staff, while they cherished a feeling for him very much akin to what we hear of the clannish ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... in me, except, perhaps, in the provinces. Ah! I like the provinces," he continued. "I have many friends in them. The Scotch are a splendid people to play to, but then English people, by which I mean English and Scotch alike, are very clannish, and very tender to an old friend. I always feel when I appear upon the stage that I am in the presence of friends. I don't think that French actors are so much regarded as English actors. We feel the affection of our people so much. But, then, we go in and out ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... all the monarchic powers of this period in common were not so successful as in the rest of Europe. The kings of the house of Stuart, who had themselves proceeded from the ranks of the nobility, never succeeded in reducing the powerful lords to real obedience. The clannish national feeling, closely bordering on the old Keltic principle, procured the nobles at all times numerous and devoted followers: they fought out their feuds among themselves, and then combined anew in free confederacies. They held ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... Bernard angrily, "come here." And as the girl appeared he made a break from the house. He possessed an abiding faith in the endurance of Eugenia's clannish soul that was proof against even the suggestion that it might succumb. His father was unquestionably trying, but Eugie was unquestionably strong, and she loved her people with a passion which he felt to be romantically unsurpassable. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... thought that all my troubles were ended yet. The Indians are very clannish, and, although my damaged prestige was now almost restored, and, no doubt, favourable rumours heralded me wherever I went, still the good-will of each district had in a way to be won. Many months later, when I found myself among the pagans ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... turn, after wandering from eye to eye, settled down into a sort of oration that was especially addressed to the understanding of Captain Noah Poke. My auditor contrived to get one ear entirely clear of the bison's skin, and nodded approbation of what fell from me, with a proper degree of human and clannish spirit. We might possibly have harangued in this desultory manner, to the present time, had not the amiable Chatterissa advanced, and, with the tact and delicacy which distinguish her sex, by placing her pretty patte on the mouth of the young nobleman, effectually checked his volubility. ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... their own society than women are. Men delight to breakfast together, to take luncheon together, to dine together, to sup together. They rejoice in clubs devoted exclusively to their service, as much taboo to women as a trappist monastery. Women are not quite so clannish. There are not very many women's clubs in the world; it is not certain that those which do exist are very brilliant or very entertaining. Women seldom give supper parties, "all by themselves they" after the fashion of that "grande ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... of our recent immigrants are at least very difficult of social assimilation. They are clannish, tend to form colonies of their own race in which their language, customs, and ideals are preserved. This is especially true of the illiterate immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. As we have already seen, the rate of illiteracy ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... sell part of Kintail, they offered to buy in the land for him, that it might not pass from the family. One son was then living, and there was no immediate prospect of the succession expiring; but, in deference to their clannish prejudice or affection, the sale of any portion of the estate was deferred for about two years. The blow came at last. Lord Seaforth was involved in West India plantations, which were mismanaged, and he was forced to dispose of part of the "gift land." ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... in a clannish view, For clans are naught to me, But 'tis our ancient Tartan Plaid I dearly love to see. 'Tis something grand ye will agree To see a Highland lad, Donn'd in his Celtic native garb, ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... interesting bird is a clannish fellow. He has lost the ordinary sparrow habit and has come to like to live in crowded groups. Seclusion is not at all to his taste, and if there are only a few sparrows in the neighborhood those ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... white people of the South are banded, Mr. President, not in prejudice against the blacks—not in sectional estrangement—not in the hope of political dominion—but in a deep and abiding necessity. Here is this vast ignorant and purchasable vote—clannish, credulous, impulsive and passionate—tempting every art of the demagogue, but insensible to the appeal of the statesman. Wrongly started, in that it was led into alienation from its neighbor and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... as clannish as ever," cried the General. "Scotland has changed so much in the last half century that the Highlanders might have become quite unsentimental ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... needs to be taught to be more just and more generous in regard to other families. The clannish spirit ought to pass, for it is without excuse in these days. The family interests a generation ago were altogether too narrowly conceived to make a wholesome social life possible. Greater cooperation is necessary if rural people are to ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves

... Charleston, between the Knickerbockers of New York and the Creoles of New Orleans. A Scotchman was to the South a comprehensive name for a greedy, beggarly adventurer, knavish and money-loving to the last degree, full of absurd pride of pedigree, clannish and cold-blooded, vindictive as a Corsican, and treacherous as a modern Greek. An Englishman was to the North a bullying, arrogant coward,—purse-proud, yet cringing to rank,—without loyalty and without sentiment,—given over to mere material interests, not comprehending the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... been hurled at them as a term of reproach. So are the frightened sheep clannish when they huddle together in the shelterless field, for protection against the blasts ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith



Words linked to "Clannish" :   private, joint, snobbish, cliquish



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