Totem

Definition of Totem

To´tem
n.1.A rude picture, as of a bird, beast, or the like, used by the North American Indians as a symbolic designation, as of a family or a clan; also, the object or animal itself, considered as an symbol of the family.
And they painted on the grave posts
Of the graves, yet unforgotten,
Each his own ancestral totem
Each the symbol of his household;
Figures of the bear and reindeer,
Of the turtle, crane, and beaver.
- Longfellow.
The totem, the clan deity, the beast or bird who in some supernatural way attends to the clan and watches over it.
- Bagehot.
2.Anything which serves as a venerated or mystic symbol or emblem.

Related Words

allegory, ancestral spirits, angel, animal kingdom, ashram, attendant godling, blood, body, breed, brood, caste, charactery, cipher, clan, class, colony, commonwealth, commune, community, control, conventional symbol, daemon, deme, demon, economic class, emblem, endogamous group, extended family, fairy godmother, familiar, familiar spirit, family, folk, genius, genius domus, genius loci, gens, good angel, good genius, guardian, guardian angel, guardian spirit, guide, house, household gods, iconology, ideogram, invisible helper, kind, kinship group, lares and penates, lares compitales, lares familiaris, lares permarini, lares praestites, lares viales, line, lineage, logogram, logotype, love knot, manes, matriclan, ministering angel, moiety, nation, nuclear family, numen, order, patriclan, penates, people, phratria, phratry, phyle, pictogram, plant kingdom, race, sept, settlement, social class, society, special providence, species, stem, stirps, stock, strain, subcaste, symbol, symbolic system, symbolism, symbolization, symbology, token, totem pole, tribe, tutelar god, tutelary, type
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Tosto
Toswink
Tot
Tota
Total
Total abstinence
Total depravity
Total differential
Totalis
Totalisator
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Totalization
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Tote
Totear
-Totem-
Totem pole
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Totipalmi
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Totterer
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Tottery
Tottle
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Toucan
Toucanet
Touch
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