Etymology
From French groupe.
Noun, Singular - group
Plural - groups
group (plural groups)
- 1. A number of things or persons being in some relation to one another.
- There is a group of houses behind the hill.
- A group of people gathered in front of the Parliament to demonstrate against the Prime Minister's proposals.
- He left town to join a Communist group
- 2. (group theory) A set with an associative binary operation, under which there exists an identity element, and such that each element has an inverse.
- 3. A (usually small) group of people who perform music together.
- Did you see the new jazz group?
- 4. (astronomy) A small number (up to about fifty) of galaxies that are near each other.
- 5. (chemistry) A column in the periodic table of chemical elements.
- 6. (chemistry) A functional entity consisting of certain atoms whose presence provides a certain property to a molecule, such as the methyl group.
- 7. (sociology) A subset of a culture or of a society.
- 8. (military) An air force formation.
- 9. (geology) A collection of formations or rock strata.
- 10. (computing) In the Unix operating system, a number of users with same rights with respect to accession, modification, and execution of files, computers and peripherals.
Synonyms
- (number of things or persons being in some relation to each other): collection, set
- (people who perform music together): band, ensemble
Editor's note: Generally, 'group' used in the context of the Symposia will refer to an local, regional , or worldwide association of persons sharing in some manner their spiritual experience and intellectual understanding of such experience i.e. TeaM groups.