Let $\mathcal {F}$ be a hereditary collection of finite subsets of $\mathbb {N}$. In this paper, we introduce and characterize $\mathcal {F}$-(almost) greedy bases. Given such a family $\mathcal {F}$, a basis $(e_n)_n$ for a Banach space X is called $\mathcal {F}$-greedy if there is a constant $C\geqslant 1$ such that for each $x\in X$, $m \in \mathbb {N}$, and $G_m(x)$, we have

Here, $G_m(x)$ is a greedy sum of x of order m, and $\mathbb {K}$ is the scalar field. From the definition, any $\mathcal {F}$-greedy basis is quasi-greedy, and so the notion of being $\mathcal {F}$-greedy lies between being greedy and being quasi-greedy. We characterize $\mathcal {F}$-greedy bases as being $\mathcal {F}$-unconditional, $\mathcal {F}$-disjoint democratic, and quasi-greedy, thus generalizing the well-known characterization of greedy bases by Konyagin and Temlyakov. We also prove a similar characterization for $\mathcal {F}$-almost greedy bases.

Furthermore, we provide several examples of bases that are nontrivially $\mathcal {F}$-greedy. For a countable ordinal $\alpha $, we consider the case $\mathcal {F}=\mathcal {S}_{\alpha }$, where $\mathcal {S}_{\alpha }$ is the Schreier family of order $\alpha $. We show that for each $\alpha $, there is a basis that is $\mathcal {S}_{\alpha }$-greedy but is not $\mathcal {S}_{\alpha +1}$-greedy. In other words, we prove that none of the following implications can be reversed: for two countable ordinals $\alpha < \beta $,