Word.ws English Dictionary

in common

in common prepositional phrase: shared with one or more others.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Shared with one or more others.
    • My cousin and I have a grandfather and grandmother in common.
  2. Held in joint possession.
  3. Possessing similar or identical qualities.
    • I hate being alone with my boss as we have nothing in common.
    • Brittany is a relatively barren and sparsely populated land, and had it not been for tourists, the fishing and the cultivation of potatoes, the life of the people would have been hard indeed. It has, in fact, much in common with Western Ireland.1957 February, P. B. Whitehouse, “Narrow Gauge from St. Brieuc”, in Railway Magazine, page 85

in common meaning in Tamil, Urdu and Sanskrit

in common in Tamil

சமுதாயம்

in common in Urdu

مشترکہ

in common in Sanskrit

in common, in company, jointly, conjointly, in concert
सह sahá

Origin of in common

Possibly a calque of French en commun. Compare Italian in comune, Spanish en común and Portuguese em comum.

Questions about in common

What does in common mean?
In common means shared with one or more others.
What is in common in Tamil?
In common in Tamil is சமுதாயம். See In common meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is in common?
In common is a prepositional phrase.

Words near in common in the dictionary

  1. in cold blood
  2. in collar
  3. in color
  4. in colour
  5. in command
  6. in common
  7. in company with
  8. in comparison
  9. in compendio
  10. in competition
  11. in complement

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in common (page history and authors); in common (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); in common (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); सह (Sanskrit) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-in-common.ogg.

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