familial

adj.

1. Of or relating to a family.
2. Occurring or tending to occur among members of a family, usually by heredity: familial traits; familial disease.

adjective

Of or relating to the family or household: domestic, family, home, homely, household. See kin, group.

Occurring in or affecting members of a closely related group of animals more than would be expected by chance.

• f. aggregations — groups of diseased animals concentrated in related groups of animals. Called also familial clusters.
• Basenji f. anemia — see familial nonspherocytic anemia of Basenji dogs.
• f. cluster — see familial aggregations (above).
• f. convulsions and ataxia of cattle — an inherited, congenital disease of Aberdeen Angus calves characterized by intermittent tetanic convulsions which are replaced as the calf gets older by incoordination and then paralysis in older animals. The characteristic lesion is a selective cerebellar cortical degeneration.
• f. disease — diseases which occur at a higher than expected frequency in closely related groups of animals, where the relationship is a shared environment or an inheritance.
• f. glomerulonephritis — of Dobermans characterized by development of signs in dogs less than a year old but cases may survive for some years; the histopathological lesion is a membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis.
• f. renal disease — includes familial glomerulonephritis, nephropathy, juvenile nephropathy, all of dogs, familial glomerulonephritis of Finnish-Landrace sheep, progressive renal fibrosis of mutant Southdown sheep.

IN BRIEF: Relating to the people who are related to each other by blood or marriage.

Familial ties are often the most important in a person's life.

Tutor's tip: Change "familial" (pertaining to one's family) values too much over time and younger generations may not be "familiar" (well-known; friendly; knowledgeable) with important heirlooms.