What is "macrofamily"

n. (context linguistics English) A grouping of two or more language family that share some relationship

In historical linguistics, a macrofamily, also called a superfamily or phylum, is a proposed genetic relationship grouping together language families (also isolates) in a larger scale classification. However, Campbell regards this term as superfluous, preferring " language family" for those classifications for which there is consensus and "distant genetic relationship" for those for which there is no, or not yet, consensus, whether due to lack of documentation or scholarship of the constituent languages, or to an estimated time depth thought by many linguists to be too great for reconstruction.

More rarely, the term has also been applied to an exceptionally large language family, such as Afro-Asiatic.

Examples of proposed macro-families range from relatively recent such as Macro-Jê, Macro-Waikurúan, Macro-Mayan, Macro-Siouan, Penutian, Na-Dene or Congo-Saharan (Niger-Saharan) to older ones such as Austric, Dené–Caucasian, Eurasiatic, Nostratic or Ural-Altaic.