Group

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ɡɹuːp/
• Rhymes: -uːp

Alternative forms

• groupe obsolete

Origin

From French groupe ("cluster, group"), from Italian gruppo groppo ("a knot, heap, group, bag (of money)"), itself derived from Vulgar Latin *kruppo, from Proto-Germanic *kruppaz ("lump, round mass, body, crop"), from Proto-Indo-European *grewb- ("to crumple, bend, crawl"). Cognate with German Kropf ("crop, craw, bunch"), Old English cropp, croppa ("cluster, bunch, sprout, flower, berry, ear of corn, crop"), Dutch krop ("craw"), Old Norse kroppr ("hump, bunch"). More at crop, croup.

Full definition of group

Noun

1. A number of things or persons being in some relation to one another.
• 1918, W. B. Maxwell, The Mirror and the Lamp Chapter 5, Then everybody once more knelt, and soon the blessing was pronounced. The choir and the clergy trooped out slowly, …, down the nave to the western door. … At a seemingly immense distance the surpliced group stopped to say the last prayer.
• 2013-07-19, Peter Wilby, Finland spreads word on schools, Imagine a country where children do nothing but play until they start compulsory schooling at age seven. Then, without exception, they attend comprehensives until the age of 16. Charging school fees is illegal, and so is sorting pupils into ability groups by streaming or setting.
2. there is a group of houses behind the hill;  he left town to join a Communist group
   A group of people gathered in front of the Parliament to demonstrate against the Prime Minister's proposals.
3. (group theory) A set with an associative binary operation, under which there exists an identity element, and such that each element has an inverse.
4. (geometry, archaic) An effective divisor on a curve.
5. A (usually small) group of people who perform music together.
   Did you see the new jazz group?
6. (astronomy) A small number (up to about fifty) of galaxies that are near each other.
7. (chemistry) A column in the periodic table of chemical elements.
8. (chemistry) A functional entity consisting of certain atoms whose presence provides a certain property to a molecule, such as the methyl group.
9. (sociology) A subset of a culture or of a society.
10. (military) An air force formation.
11. (geology) A collection of formations or rock strata.
12. (computing) A number of users with same rights with respect to accession, modification, and execution of files, computers and peripherals.
13. An element of an espresso machine from which hot water pours into the portafilter.
14. (music) A number of eighth, sixteenth, etc., notes joined at the stems; sometimes rather indefinitely applied to any ornament made up of a few short notes.

Synonyms

• (number of things or persons being in some relation to each other) collection, set
• (people who perform music together) band, ensemble

Hypernyms

• (in group theory) monoid

Derived terms

Verb

1. (transitive) To put together to form a group.
2. (intransitive) To come together to form a group.

Synonyms

• (put together to form a group) amass, categorise/categorize, classify, collect, collect up, gather, gather together, gather up