communities

Noun

community (countable and uncountable, plural communities)

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...1586, Giraldus Cambrensis [i.e., Gerald of Wales], “The Irish Historie Composed and Written by Giraldus Cambrensis, […] ”, in Iohn Hooker alias Vowell [i.e., John Hooker], transl., The Second Volume...
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.1999, “Fourteenth Century: Before and After”, in Therese Boos Dykeman, editor, The Neglected Canon: Nine Women Philosophers: First to the Twentieth Century, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers...
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...1949, G[eorge] E[velyn] Hutchinson; E[dward] S[mith] Deevey, Jr., “Ecological Studies on Populations”, in George S. Avery, Jr., editor, Survey of Biological Progress, volume I, New York, N.Y....
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...2015, Sandy Baldwin, “I Read My Spam”, in The Internet Unconscious: On the Subject of Electronic Literature (International Texts in Critical Media Aesthetics; 9), New York, N.Y.; London: Bloomsbury...
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.2006, James G[eorge] Samra, “The Role of the Local Community in the Maturation Process”, in Being Conformed to Christ in Community: A Study of Maturity, Maturation and the Local Church in the...
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.

See all 10 meanings of community