[f. CLAN sb. + -SHIP.]
1. The system of clans; division into clans; union of persons in, or as in, a clan.
1772. Pennant, Tours Scotl., 81 (R.). The habitations of the Highlanders, not singly, but in small groupes, as if they loved society or clanship.
1815. Elphinstone, Acc. Caubul (1842), I. 217. Exercised by chiefs in the Highlands, when clanship was in its vigour.
1865. Tylor, Early Hist. Man., x. 281. The practice of reckoning clanship from the mother.
2. The feeling or spirit of attachment and loyalty to one’s clan or fraternity (see CLAN sb.).
1809–10. Coleridge, Friend (ed. 3), III. 162. The jealous and indiscriminate partiality of clanship.
1851. Helps, Comp. Solit., xii. (1874), 225. There is less of clanship, less of the rallying round men of force or genius.
