COMMUNITY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does community mean? 

• COMMUNITY (noun)
  The noun COMMUNITY has 7 senses:

1. a group of people living in a particular local area

2. a group of people having a religion, ethnic, profession, or other particular characteristic in common

3. common ownership

4. a group of nations having common interests

5. agreement as to goals

6. a district where people live; occupied primarily by private residences

7. (ecology) a group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the same region and interacting with each other

  Familiarity information: COMMUNITY used as a noun is common.

 Dictionary entry details 

• COMMUNITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A group of people living in a particular local area

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Context example:

the team is drawn from all parts of the community

Hypernyms ("community" is a kind of...):

assemblage; gathering (a group of persons together in one place)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "community"):

parish (a local church community)

Circassian (a mostly Sunni Muslim community living in northwestern Caucasia)

Aleut (a community of Native Americans who speak an Eskimo-Aleut language and inhabit the Aleutian Islands and southwestern Alaska)

horde (a nomadic community)

crossroads; hamlet (a community of people smaller than a village)

settlement; small town; village (a community of people smaller than a town)

speech community (people sharing a given language or dialect)

Islam Nation; Islamic Ummah; Muslim Ummah; Umma; Ummah (the Muslim community or people, considered to extend from Mauritania to Pakistan)

neighborhood; neighbourhood (people living near one another)

house (the members of a religious community living together)

convent (a community of people in a religious order (especially nuns) living together)

Instance hyponyms:

Xhosa (a community of Negroid people in southern South Africa)

Zulu (a community of Negroid people in eastern South Africa)

Kechua; Quechua (a community of South American Indians in Peru who were formerly the ruling class of the Incan Empire)

Inca; Inka (the small group of Quechua living in the Cuzco Valley in Peru who established hegemony over their neighbors in order to create an empire that lasted from about 1100 until the Spanish conquest in the early 1530s)

Akwa'ala (a community of Native Americans who speak a Hokan language and live in Baja California)

Achomawi (a community of Native Americans who speak a Hokan language and live in northeastern California)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A group of people having a religion, ethnic, profession, or other particular characteristic in common

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Context example:

they formed a community of scientists

Hypernyms ("community" is a kind of...):

people ((plural) any group of human beings (men or women or children) collectively)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Common ownership

Classified under:

Nouns denoting possession and transfer of possession

Context example:

they shared a community of possessions

Hypernyms ("community" is a kind of...):

ownership (the relation of an owner to the thing possessed; possession with the right to transfer possession to others)

Derivation:

communal (for or by a group rather than individuals)

Sense 4

Meaning:

A group of nations having common interests

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Context example:

they hoped to join the NATO community

Hypernyms ("community" is a kind of...):

global organization; international organisation; international organization; world organisation; world organization (an international alliance involving many different countries)

Sense 5

Meaning:

Agreement as to goals

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

community; community of interests

Context example:

the preachers and the bootleggers found they had a community of interests

Hypernyms ("community" is a kind of...):

accord; agreement (harmony of people's opinions or actions or characters)

Sense 6

Meaning:

A district where people live; occupied primarily by private residences

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

community; residential area; residential district

Hypernyms ("community" is a kind of...):

district; dominion; territorial dominion; territory (a region marked off for administrative or other purposes)

Meronyms (parts of "community"):

housing estate (a residential area where the houses were all planned and built at the same time)

housing development (a residential area of similar dwellings built by property developers and usually under a single management)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "community"):

planned community (a residential district that is planned for a certain class of residents)

uptown (a residential part of town away from the central commercial district)

suburb; suburban area; suburbia (a residential district located on the outskirts of a city)

exurbia (a residential area outside of a city and beyond suburbia)

tenement district (a residential district occupied primarily with tenement houses)

rabbit warren; warren (an overcrowded residential area)

Instance hyponyms:

Georgetown (a section of northwestern Washington, D.C.)

Greenwich Village; Village (a mainly residential district of Manhattan; 'the Village' became a home for many writers and artists in the 20th century)

Sense 7

Meaning:

(ecology) a group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the same region and interacting with each other

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

biotic community; community

Hypernyms ("community" is a kind of...):

group; grouping (any number of entities (members) considered as a unit)

Domain category:

bionomics; ecology; environmental science (the branch of biology concerned with the relations between organisms and their environment)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "community"):

biome (a major biotic community characterized by the dominant forms of plant life and the prevailing climate)

 Context examples 

In other words, the selected communities look like a stable, healthy plant microbiome, akin to what a robust tomato plant might pass to its offspring.

(How do you cultivate a healthy plant microbiome?, National Science Foundation)

What they found was a strong connection between the microbial community and a decrease in the presence of wax esters in the lower part of the small intestine.

(Whales may owe their efficient digestion to millions of tiny microbes, National Science Foundation)

Researchers at Drexel University are using its pattern-recognition ability to identify microbial communities in the human body by sifting through volumes of genetic code.

(Microbes are at work in our bodies, and researchers have figured out what they're up to, National Science Foundation)

A primary objective is to integrate scientific research and clinical programs with community outreach activities to local populations in Detroit.

(Barbara Ann Karmano Cancer Institute, NCI Thesaurus)

The term includes individuals belonging to a large number of tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of them still enduring as communities.

(American Indian, NCI Thesaurus)

Previous studies have shown that living in communities characterised as deprived can lead residents of those areas to rate their health as suboptimal and experience early death.

(Depression - men far more at risk than women in deprived areas, University of Cambridge)

Bacteria in certain communities have genes tailored by evolution for cycling the nutrients that are naturally available in their ecosystems.

(From tropical to boreal ecosystems, temperature drives functioning, National Science Foundation)

The researchers are already working on the next phase of their research, analyzing the microbial community responsible for degrading carbon in a salt marsh ecosystem, especially when exposed to high concentrations of nitrate.

(Salt marshes' capacity to store carbon may be threatened by nitrogen pollution, National Science Foundation)

Changes in rainy and dry seasons are already disrupting fish dynamics and making their effects felt by local communities.

(Amazon fish ‘face new threats’, SciDev.Net)

Limestone surfaces are also more likely to harbor lichens — symbiotic communities composed of fungi and photosynthesizing cyanobacteria or algae.

(Tales from the crypt: Life after death in a graveyard, National Science Foundation)