family likenessn.

1748 London Evening Post 1 Sept. We most of us [sc. fools] carry a Family Likeness about us.

1766 O. Goldsmith Vicar of Wakefield I. i. 8 A family likeness prevailed through all [the children]..they had but one character.

1832 Olio 16 June 388/1 A little old woman, whose puckered features bore a strong family likeness to her brother.

1861 M. A. Paul Martha Brown vii. 61 ‘Was Mr. Brown at all like his niece?’ ‘I do not know how much was family likeness, or how much of the shrewdness and hardness natural to him were acquired by her.’

1930 Z. Fitzgerald in College Humor Feb. 121/1 The intimacies of a town where in every familiar face you saw, you could trace a family likeness.

1997 Times Lit. Suppl. 16 May 20/2 The family album asks us to trace connections between one photograph and another, discovering family likenesses in chins or ears.

1759 S. Johnson tr. P. Brumoy in C. Lennox tr. P. Brumoy Greek Theatre III. iii. 149 With respect to the comedies of Aristophanes and Plautus, Menander and Terence, Moliere and his imitators, if we compare them one with another, we shall find something of a family likeness [Fr. quelqu'air de famille].

1824 T. Medwin Conv. with Byron I. 71 All his male characters..are the same... In his women..there is little family likeness.

1883 Knowledge 24 Aug. 115/1 The family likeness of those Indian folk-tales to those [European ones] given above.

1953 Economist 14 Nov. 505/2 The problems that will confront the Atomic Energy Corporation have a family likeness..to those of MAP.

2000 N. T. Wright in A. Hastings et al. Oxf. Compan. Christian Thought 275/1 [The gospels of] Matthew, Mark, and Luke share a family likeness which John does not.