Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Growing outward.
  • adjective Related on the mother's side.
  • noun A relative on one's mother's side.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A relative on the mother's side.
  • Growing out.
  • Related through the mother; maternally cognate; as a noun, one so related.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Growing out.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A relative whose relation is traced only through female members of the family.
  • noun Any maternal female relative.
  • adjective Related to someone by female connections.
  • adjective Related on the maternal side of the family.
  • adjective linguistics Having identical grammatical structure (but with elements that are semantically different).
  • adjective Growing out.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective related on the mother's side
  • noun one related on the mother's side

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin ēnātus, past participle of ēnāscī, to issue forth : ē-, ex-, ex- + nāscī, to be born; see genə- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin enatus.

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Examples

Comments

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  • enate Related on the mother's side.

    December 8, 2007

  • We don't appear to have a Wordie list for these kind of words, ie. about how people are related. Lampbane's It's All Relative is neat and effective but doesn't seem to have a place for adjectives such as this.

    November 4, 2008

  • I started a family list a while back, but it kind of petered out. I think my idea had been to include the various relatives covered in the stirps romana. But real life must have intervened:

    all in the family

    November 4, 2008

  • A fine Mothers' day word!

    May 10, 2015

  • When a boy attains a man's estate

    He blends the learned and the innate,

    He may hew to the plan

    Of the agnate clan

    Imbued with spirit of the tribe enate.

    May 10, 2015