Clade

Clade is a noun that refers to a group that comes from a common ancestor.  Our word of the day comes from the Greek word klados (KLA dose) which means ‘branch.’ It may help to think of members of the same clade as different branches from the same family tree. Clade has been with us since the 1950s and was originally used to refer to organisms. More recently, it’s come to refer to humans and is roughly a synonym of tribe or lineage. My dad and I are proof that members of the same clade can be very different. He spends nearly all his time watching and playing sports, while I can’t dribble a basketball without accidentally breaking my jaw.