a. [f. CLAN sb. + -ISH.] Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a clan; having the sympathies, prejudices, etc., of a clan; attached to one’s own clan.
1776. Wilkes, in Boswell, Johnson (1887), III. 73. The clannish slavery of the Highlands.
1807. G. Chalmers, Caledonia, I. III. 461. Those two cries, in particular, and all other clannish watch-words, were abolished.
1809–10. Coleridge, Friend (ed. 3), III. 73. The clannish spirit of provincial literature.
1849. W. Irving, Crayon Misc., 223. It was not always safe to have even the game of foot-ball between villages, the old clannish spirit was too apt to break out.
1861. Dixon, Hist. Ld. Bacon, iii. § 2. That clannish pride which she always felt for her mother’s kin.
Hence Clannishly adv.; Clannishness, attachment to one’s own clan.
1861. Wynter, Soc. Bees, 428. Mine host is a Dorsetshire man; and with a pardonable clannishness, has imported a little colony from his county.
1873. Spectator, 23 Aug., 1060/1. The clannishness fostered by a separate tongue, and the gratification of the lonely pride all such races feel.
1881. Masson, Carlyle, in Macm. Mag., XLV. 72. A few companions clannishly selected … from among the Dumfriesshire or Galloway lads.
