[syn: community, biotic community]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Community \Com*mu"ni*ty\, n.; pl. Communities. [L. communitas:
cf. OF. communit['e]. Cf. Commonalty, and see Common.]
1. Common possession or enjoyment; participation; as, a
community of goods.
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The original community of all things. --Locke.
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An unreserved community of thought and feeling. --W.
Irving.
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2. A body of people having common rights, privileges, or
interests, or living in the same place under the same laws
and regulations; as, a community of monks. Hence a number
of animals living in a common home or with some apparent
association of interests.
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Creatures that in communities exist. --Wordsworth.
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3. Society at large; a commonwealth or state; a body politic;
the public, or people in general.
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Burdens upon the poorer classes of the community.
--Hallam.
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Note: In this sense, the term should be used with the
definite article; as, the interests of the community.
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4. Common character; likeness. [R.]
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The essential community of nature between organic
growth and inorganic growth. --H. Spencer.
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5. Commonness; frequency. [Obs.]
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Eyes . . . sick and blunted with community. --Shak.
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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):
community
n 1: a group of people living in a particular local area; "the
team is drawn from all parts of the community"
2: common ownership; "they shared a community of possessions"
3: a group of nations having common interests; "they hoped to
join the NATO community"
4: agreement as to goals; "the preachers and the bootleggers
found they had a community of interests" [syn: community,
community of interests]
5: a district where people live; occupied primarily by private
residences [syn: residential district, residential area,
community]
6: (ecology) a group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the
same region and interacting with each other [syn:
community, biotic community]
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:
261 Moby Thesaurus words for "community":
Everyman, John Doe, Public, accord, accordance, affiliation,
affinity, agape, agreement, alikeness, alliance, amity, analogy,
aping, approach, approximation, ashram, assimilation, association,
balance, bipartisanship, body, body politic, bonds of harmony,
branch, brotherly love, caritas, caste, cement of friendship,
charity, church, citizenry, clan, class, closeness, coaction,
coadjuvancy, coadministration, coagency, cochairmanship,
codirectorship, coequality, collaboration, collaborativeness,
collective farm, collectivism, collectivity, collegiality,
collusion, colony, commensalism, commerce, common effort,
common enterprise, common man, common ownership, commonwealth,
communal effort, communalism, commune, communication, communion,
communism, communitarianism, community at large,
community of interests, companionship, company, comparability,
comparison, compatibility, complicity, concert, concord,
concordance, concurrence, conformity, congeniality, congress,
consociation, consortship, constituency, conversation, converse,
cooperation, cooperative society, cooperativeness, copying,
corelation, correlation, correlativism, correlativity,
correspondence, cultural community, culture, democracy,
denomination, division, duet, duumvirate, dwellers, economic class,
ecumenicalism, ecumenicism, ecumenism, empathy, endogamous group,
equilibrium, equipollence, equivalence, esprit, esprit de corps,
estate, ethnic group, everybody, everyman, everyone, everywoman,
extended family, faction, family, feeling of identity,
fellow feeling, fellowship, folk, folks, frictionlessness,
general public, gens, gentry, good vibes, good vibrations, group,
habitancy, happy family, harmony, identity, imitation, inhabitants,
intercommunication, intercommunion, intercourse,
inverse proportion, inverse ratio, inverse relationship,
joining of forces, joint effort, joint operation, kibbutz, kinship,
kinship group, kolkhoz, like-mindedness, likeness, likening,
linguistic community, love, mass action, men, metaphor, mimicking,
moiety, morale, mutual assistance, mutualism, mutuality, nation,
nationality, nearness, nuclear family, octet, offshoot, oneness,
order, organization, parallelism, parity, partnership, party,
peace, people, people at large, people in general, persons,
persuasion, phratria, phratry, phyle, polity, pooling,
pooling of resources, populace, population, profit sharing,
proportionality, public, public ownership, pulling together,
quartet, quintet, race, rapport, rapprochement, reciprocality,
reciprocation, reciprocity, relativity, religious order,
resemblance, sameness, schism, school, sect, sectarism, segment,
semblance, septet, settlement, sextet, sharecropping, sharing,
similarity, simile, similitude, simulation, social activity,
social class, social intercourse, social relations, socialism,
society, solidarity, speech community, state, state ownership,
stock, strain, subcaste, symbiosis, symmetry, sympathy, symphony,
synergism, synergy, team spirit, teamwork, totem, town meeting,
trio, triumvirate, troika, understanding, union, unison,
united action, unity, variety, version, whole people, world,
you and me
Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856):
COMMUNITY. This word has several meanings; when used in common parlance it
signifies the body of the people.
2. In the civil law, by community is understood corporations, or bodies
politic. Dig. 3, 4.
3. In the French law, which has been adopted in this respect in
Louisiana, Civ. Code, art. 2371, community is a species of partnership,
which a man and woman contract when they are lawfully married to each other.
It consists of the profits of all, the effects of which the husband has the
administration and enjoyment, either of right or in fact; of the produce of
the reciprocal industry and labor of both husband and wife, and of the
estates which they may acquire during the marriage, either by donations made
jointly to them, or by purchase, or in any other similar way, even although
the purchase he made in the name of one of the two, and not of both; because
in that case the period of time when the purchase is made is alone attended
to, and not the person who made the purchase. 10 L. R. 146; Id. 172, 181; 1
N. S. 325; 4 N. S. 212. The debts contracted during the marriage enter into
the community, and must be acquitted out of the common fund; but not the
debts contracted before the marriage.
4. The community is either, first, conventional, or that which is
formed by an express agreement in the contract of marriage itself; by this
contract the legal community may be modified, as to the proportions which
each shall take, or as to the things which shall compose it; Civ. Code of L.
art. 2393; second, legal, which takes place when the parties make no
agreement on this subject in the contract of marriage; when it is regulated
by the law of the domicil they had at the time of marriage.
5. The effects which compose the community of gains, are divided into
two equal portions between the heirs, at the dissolution of the marriage.
Civ. Code of L. art. 2375. See Poth. h.t.; Toull. h.t.; Civ. Code of Lo.
tit. 6, c. 2, s. 4.
6. In another sense, community is the right which all men have,
according to the laws of nature, to use all things. Wolff, Inst. Sec. 186.