Noun

(en-noun)

The womb.

* 1646 , Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica , III.17:

upon conception the inward orifice of the matrix exactly closeth, so that it commonly admitteth nothing after [...].

* 1969 , Vladimir Nabokov, Ada or Ardor , Penguin 2011, p. 296:

In very rare cases, when the matrix just goes on pegging away automatically, the doctor can take advantage of that and ease out the second brat who then can be considered to be, say, three minutes younger [...].

(biology) The material or tissue in which more specialized structures are embedded.

(biology) An extracellular matrix, the material or tissue between the cells of animals or plants.

(biology) Part of the mitochondrion.

(biology) The medium in which bacteria are cultured.

(mathematics) A rectangular arrangement of numbers or terms having various uses such as transforming coordinates in geometry, solving systems of linear equations in linear algebra and representing graphs in graph theory.

(computing) A two-dimensional array.

A table of data.

(geology) A geological matrix, the outer material of a rock consisting of larger grains embedded in a material consisting of smaller ones.

(archaeology and paleontology) The sediment surrounding and including the artifacts, features, and other materials at a site.

(analytical chemistry) The environment from which a given sample is taken.

Noun

(lb) A group of people who are closely related to one another (by blood or marriage); for example, a set of parents and their children; an immediate family.

:

*

*:Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family' perhaps at a critical moment, when the ' family is just assuming the robes of respectability:it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off.

*{{quote-magazine, title=Towards the end of poverty

, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838, page=11, magazine=(The Economist) citation , passage=America’s poverty line is $63 a day for a family of four. In the richer parts of the emerging world $4 a day is the poverty barrier. But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 ([…]): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.}}

(lb) An extended family; a group of people who are related to one another by blood or marriage.

*1915', William T. Groves, ''A History and Genealogy of the Groves '''Family in America

(lb) A (close-knit) group of people related by blood, marriage, law, or custom, especially if they live or work together.

:

:

:

A rank in the classification of organisms, below order and above genus; a taxon at that rank.

:

*

*:The closest affinities of the Jubulaceae are with the Lejeuneaceae. The two families share in common: a elaters usually 1-spiral, trumpet-shaped and fixed to the capsule valves, distally.

(lb) Any group or aggregation of things classed together as kindred or related from possessing in common characteristics which distinguish them from other things of the same order.

:

A group of instruments having the same basic method of tone production.

:

A group of languages believed to have descended from the same ancestral language.

:

:

:

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author=(Jonathan Freedland)

, volume=189, issue=1, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Obama's once hip brand is now tainted , passage=Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.}}