group

 
Pronunciation: /gruːp/

noun

[treated as singular or plural]
  • 1a number of people or things that are located, gathered, or classed together: a group of boys approached the bulbs should be planted in groups
  • a number of people that work together or share certain beliefs: I now belong to my local drama group
  • a commercial organization consisting of several companies under common ownership: the largest newspaper group in the UK
  • a number of musicians who play popular music together: I’ve always been a fan of the guitarists in the group
  • Military a division of an air force, usually consisting of two or more stations.
  • 2 Chemistry a set of elements occupying a column in the periodic table and having broadly similar properties arising from their similar electronic structure.
  • a combination of atoms having a recognizable identity in a number of compounds: a methyl group
  • 3 Mathematics a set of elements, together with an associative binary operation, which contains an inverse for each element and an identity element.
  • 4 Linguistics (in systemic grammar) a level of structure between clause and word, broadly corresponding to phrase in other grammars.

verb

[with object and adverbial]
  • put in a group or groups: three chairs were grouped around a table
  • put into categories; classify: molluscs are grouped into seven different classes
  • [no object, with adverbial] form a group or groups: growers began to group together to form cooperatives

Derivatives

groupage

noun

Origin:

late 17th century: from French groupe, from Italian gruppo, of Germanic origin; related to crop