Word.ws English Dictionary

common-wealth

common-wealth is the alternative form of commonwealth.

Meaning of commonwealth

Noun

commonwealth (plural commonwealths)

  1. (obsolete) The well-being of a community.
  2. The entirety of a (secular) society, a polity, a state.
    • Remeber I saye yt ye were at that tyme wt oute Christ and were reputed aliantes from the comen welth [πολιτεία (politeía)] of Israel and were straugers fro the testamentes of promes and had no hope and were with out god in this worlde.1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter Schöffer], →OCLC, Ephesians ij:[12]
  3. Republic. Often capitalized, as Commonwealth.
    • Be it declared and enacted by this present Parliament and by the Authoritie of the same That the People of England and of all the Dominions and Territoryes thereunto belonging are and shall be and are hereby constituted, made, established, and confirmed to be a Commonwealth and free State And shall...1649, Act of the Long Parliament

See all 13 meanings of commonwealth

Forms of common-wealth

pluralcommon-wealths

Questions about common-wealth

What is common-wealth the alternative form of?
Common-wealth is the alternative form of commonwealth.

Words near common-wealth in the dictionary

  1. Common-Ridings
  2. common-sense
  3. common-sensical
  4. common-site picketing
  5. common-situs picketing
  6. common-wealth
  7. common-wealths
  8. commonable
  9. commonage
  10. commonages
  11. commonalities

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: common-wealth (page history and authors); commonwealth (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “common-wealth.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/common-wealth. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.