community

noun communities · communitie

1. countable A group sharing common characteristics, such as the same language, law, religion, or tradition. [W]e are not borne to our ſelues alone, but the prince, the countrie, the parents, freends, wiues, children and familie, euerie of them doo claime an intereſt in vs, and to euerie of them we muſt be beneficiall: otherwiſe we doo degenerate from that communitie and ſocietie, which by ſuch offices by
2. countable A residential or religious collective; a commune. The Beguines, an uncloistered religiously inspired woman's movement began about the year 1210 in Liége, Belgium. Generally the Beguines lived in community or in small cottages behind a wall. At times threatened as heretics, they were finally disbanded by the Reformation.
3. countable A group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the same region and interacting with each other. Synecology has for the objects of its study, not individual organisms but biological communities, which are groups of organisms living in a given space, the properties of which space select a certain assemblage of organisms of definite autecological characteristics. Such communities are moreover not
4. Internet, countable A group of people interacting by electronic means for educational, professional, social, or other purposes; a virtual community. Spam texts are encoded but no decryption is possible. There is no plaintext message. I find them wonderful, and read them as poetics, as odd fragments generative of narrtives and scenography. I find the process of their production wonderful as well. The texts are written to elude community standards
5. uncountable The condition of having certain attitudes and interests in common. We hope to demonstrate that Paul understood the local community to be the sphere in which and the means through which the five components of the maturation process were facilitated, thus concluding that Paul expected believers to be confirmed to Christ in community.
6. uncountable A feeling of togetherness or connectedness, common identity or of possessing a similar outlook, perspective and purpose with some group of people. Volunteering gave me a sense of community.
7. countable, obsolete Common enjoyment or possession; participation. a community of goods
8. obsolete, uncountable Common character; likeness. We are now in the ninth year of the anarchy of France. […] A diſpoſition to peace has been diſplayed, without conſideration of the royal family of France. The natural horror at the effuſion of blood cannot be too ſtrong, and might of itſelf perſuade us to any ſort of peace; but it is a great queſtio
9. obsolete, uncountable Commonness; frequency. So when he had occaſion to be ſeene, / He was but as the Cuckoe is in Iune, / Heard, not regarded: Seene, but with ſuch eie / As ſicke and blunted with communitie, / Affoord no extraordinary gaze.
10. Wales, countable A local area within a county or county borough which is the lowest tier of local government, usually represented by a community council or town council, which is generally equivalent to a civil parish in England.

Opposite: anticommunity, noncommunity