# Dominant group/Relative synonyms

The difference between exact synonyms and relative synonyms is similar to the difference between identical twins and fraternal or sororal twins.
This resource is experimental in the sense that a number of relative synonyms for dominant group are not relative synonyms when either word1 (dominant synonym) or word2 (synonym group) is actually used in context other than synonymy for either word. Finding these cross-over terms may help to better restrict the overall contextual meanings for the various relative synonyms and dominant group.
Two different words having very close meanings are relative synonyms, while two different words having exactly the same meanings are absolute synonyms.

## Synonymous definitions

A synonymous definition is a definition “defining a single word [or symbol] by giving another single word [or symbol] which has the same meaning.” But, synonymous definitions have limitations:
* “some words have no exact synonyms”,
* a synonymous definition “cannot be used in the construction of precising or theoretical definitions.”, and
* no synonym should appear in the definiens of a genus–differentia definition.
Def. a word having a very close meaning to another word is called a relative synonym.

## Dominant group

Examples from primary sources are to be used to prove or disprove each hypothesis. These can be collected per subject or in general.
* Accident hypothesis: dominant group is an accident of whatever processes are operating.
* Artifact hypothesis: dominant group may be an artifact of human endeavor or may have preceded humanity.
* Association hypothesis: dominant group is associated in some way with the original research.
* Bad group hypothesis: dominant group is the group that engages in discrimination, abuse, punishment, and additional criminal activity against other groups. It often has an unfair advantage and uses it to express monopolistic practices.
* Control group hypothesis: there is a control group that can be used to study dominant group.
* Entity hypothesis: dominant group is an entity within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
* Evolution hypothesis: dominant group is a product of evolutionary processes, such groups are the evolutionary process, produce evolutionary processes, or are independent of evolutionary processes.
* Identifier hypothesis: dominant group is an identifier used by primary source authors of original research to identify an observation in the process of analysis.
* Importance hypothesis: dominant group signifies original research results that usually need to be explained by theory and interpretation of experiments.
* Indicator hypothesis: dominant group may be an indicator of something as yet not understood by the primary author of original research.
* Influence hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article containing original research to indicate influence or an influential phenomenon.
* Interest hypothesis: dominant group is a theoretical entity used by scholarly authors of primary sources for phenomena of interest.
* Metadefinition hypothesis: all uses of dominant group by all primary source authors of original research are included in the metadefinition for dominant group.
* Null hypothesis: there is no significant or special meaning of dominant group in any sentence or figure caption in any refereed journal article.
* Object hypothesis: dominant group is an object within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
* Obvious hypothesis: the only meaning of dominant group is the one found in Mosby's Medical Dictionary.
* Original research hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article by the author to indicate that the article contains original research.
* Primordial hypothesis: dominant group is a primordial concept inherent to humans such that every language or other form of communication no matter how old or whether extinct, on the verge of extinction, or not, has at least a synonym for dominant group.
* Purpose hypothesis: dominant group is written into articles by authors for a purpose.
* Regional hypothesis: dominant group, when it occurs, is only a manifestation of the limitations within a region. Variation of those limitations may result in the loss of a dominant group with the eventual appearance of a new one or none at all.
* Source hypothesis: dominant group is a source within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
* Term hypothesis: dominant group is a significant term that may require a 'rigorous definition' or application and verification of an empirical definition.

## Relative synonymy

"If a given group includes only absolute synonyms, it is taken as such for further steps. If the group includes at least one relative synonym, all of them are taken for the operation referred in mathematics as transitive closure."
"Homonyms are listed one per line. Absolute synonyms, relative synonyms and antonyms are hyphen-separated. If a relative synonym of the target term has some absolute synonyms these are listed after it comma-separated. So are the absolute synonyms of the antonyms."
Distinguishing between absolute and relative synonyms "is an important distinction for a domain-specific terminology."
"[O]ne might exchange terms almost intuitively, as though one concept of a word is fundamentally the same as its relative "synonym.""
"The text phrase "see..." indicates that "..." is considered a relative synonym."

## Synonyms

With a two-word term, genus classes (or categories) may consist of three varieties:
* category1 + category2,
* "dominant" + category2, or
* category1 + "group".
Here "category1" refers to any category of relative synonyms for "dominant" (adjective or noun), and "category2" is the same for "group" (noun or verb).
The added possibilities of "group" as a verb suggests usages like "dominantly grouped", with the adverb "dominantly", or "dominant grouping".
These variations in part due to analyzing a two-word term allow additional possibilities to consider in forming genus differentia definitions.
The term dominant group appears to be used to identify entities of importance. The genera differentia for possible definitions of dominant group fall into the following set of orderable pairs:
Genera differentia for dominant group :
| Synonym for "dominant" | Category Number | Category Title | Synonym for "group" | Category Number | Catgeory Title |
| “superior” | 36 | SUPERIORITY | "arrangement" | 60 | ARRANGEMENT |
| “influential” | 171 | INFLUENCE | "class" | 61 | CLASSIFICATION |
| “musical note” | 462 | HARMONICS | "assembly" | 74 | ASSEMBLAGE |
| “most important” | 670 | IMPORTANCE | "size" | 194 | SIZE |
| “governing” | 739 | GOVERNMENT | "painting", "grouping" | 572 | ART |
| "master" | 747 | MASTER | "association", "set" | 786 | ASSOCIATION |
| ----- | --- | ------- | "sect" | 1018 | RELIGIONS, CULTS, SECTS |
'Orderable' means that any synonym from within the first category can be ordered with any synonym from the second category to form an alternate term for dominant group; for example, "superior class", "influential sect", "master assembly", "most important group", and "dominant painting". "Dominant" falls into category 171. "Group" is in category 61. Further, any word which has its most or much more common usage within these categories may also form an alternate term, such as "ruling group", where "ruling" has its most common usage in category 739, or "dominant party", where "party" is in category 74. "Taxon" or "taxa" are like "species" in category 61. "Society" is in category 786 so there is a "dominant society".

## Dominance groups

"Dominance group" is a cross-over phrase. The primary meaning of "dominance" falls under "authority". The secondary meaning is under "influence" like "dominant".

## Dominant class

The earliest sociological use of dominant group occurs in the article "Art in a Democracy" from 1923.
* "It is but natural that when aristocratic ideals should impose themselves upon any polity the art of that polity should reflect the taste, the culture, the ways of life, and the very being of the dominant classes.", bold added, and “At any rate, here is confirmation of the thesis that art voices the will of the dominant group in society.”
* "The prevalence of the Russian power is not the prevalence of the rude barbarians, that constitute the bulk of the nation, but of the dominant class of proprietors, which is equally civilized with the same class in any other part of Europe." from 1822.
* "[B]ecause political democracies generally arise from a compromise between contending organized elites that are unstable to impose their will unilaterally or the unilateral action of one dominant group, usually the armed forces, this does not bode well for democratization in situations in which the armed forces are inextricably tied to the interests of a dominant (and antidemocratic) agrarian class."

## Dominant family

* "Dominant" occurs in "dominant families" and "dominant influence".
* "The poet here seems to assume that the province of Connaught took its name from the race of Conn of the Hundred Battles, who were the dominant family of that province in MacCoise's time." from 1857.

## Dominant firm

* In this article dominant group does not occur but "dominant" does: "dominant player", "dominant firm", and "[f]or policy selection, the policymaker is dominant".
* "If such a fringe existed and became a threat to the dominant firm then we would expect the dominant group, by predatory action, to do something about it."

## Dominant genera

* In a freshwater ecosystem such as the large shallow Chinese lake, Lake Taihu, depending upon the time of year (summer or winter), location (Meiliang Bay or lake center), wind speed and direction, "temperature, underwater light climate, nutrients and grazing by zooplankton and" fish, the lake has a dominant species, dominant genera, and/or a dominant group. Bold added.

## Dominant party

An early occurrence of a dominant group relative synonym is from 1820.
* "There was a violent war party, who wished all the resources of the State to be placed at the disposal of the national government; there was a peace party, composed of members of both parties, determined to put every obstacle in the way of the administration; while the Federalists generally regarded the declaration of war as an act of tyranny, and the measures of the dominant party as an infringement of State rights." [Bold added]

## Dominant religions

The phrase “die Dominanten Religionen von ganz Europa” occurs in 1726.

## Dominant schools

* "It is arguably now the dominant school of economics, being taught in most major universities.", from Wikiversity Overview of economic schools of thought. When the context use of "school" is meant as an assemblage or association, the two-word phrase "dominant school" is a relative synonym for the technical term "dominant group". However, when school is meant as "school of thought", then "dominant school" is not a relative synonym. For example, "The metropolitan thesis, also known as the Laurentian thesis, is one of the dominant schools in Canadian historical thought.", from Wikipedia Metropolitan thesis. Likewise, "dominant school of belief" is also not a relative synonym. For example, "In Bhutan the Drukpa Lineage is the dominant school and state religion.", from Wikipedia Drukpa Lineage.
* "English School of Painting, a dominant school of painting in England, active in 1750–1850.", per Wikipedia The English School. This appears to be a relative synonym because "grouping" has a secondary meaning with respect to composition of art and "school of painting" is differentiated from "school of philosophy" or "school of belief".
* "During this period it had become the dominant school among Congregationalists, had led to division among Presbyterians, resulting in the creation of a new religious denomination, the New School Presbyterian (1838-69), had founded all the seminaries of the Congregationalists and several of the Presbyterians, had furnished the vital forces from which had spring the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, had established a series of colleges from Amherst in the East to Pacific University in the West, and led in a great variety of practical efforts to extend the kingdom of Christ on earth.", from Wikipedia New England theology. Bold added. Here the relative synonymy is via "religion".
* "Zhe School and the school which was supported by the royal court (Yuanti School) were the dominant schools during the early Ming period.", per Wikipedia Ming Dynasty painting.
* "Lebanon has become the dominant school in Western Pennsylvania winning the district championship five of the last six years, and in 2003, 2004, and 2005 sending record numbers of students to National Forensic League national tournament.", per Wikipedia w:Mt. Lebanon School District.

## Dominants group

* "[A]n increase in dominance interactions ... [led] to a new group of dominants that eventually laid reproductive eggs." Bold added.

## Dominant sizees

"The granite is relatively fine grained (1–2 mm dominant grain size) and isotropic without any signs of ductile or brittle deformation."

## Dominant society

* "A related, but separate, definition relies on a linguistic identity that differs from that of the dominant society [5]."
* "They were extended toward a privileged representative of the dominant society who was usually (not always) visibly accompanied by a person the group had long accepted into their midst."

## Dominant species

* "At the low density given by the spherically symmetric wind model (see Table 1), the dominant species in the gas are atomic ions while as the gas number density increases, the recombination of ions takes place and the gas composition is governed by neutral-phase chemistry, that is, the dominant species are neutral atoms and molecules although electrons and some ions are still present in relatively large amounts (for example, C$^+$, O$^+$ and He$^+$)."
* "From the geometry and scaling laws the contribution of a clump of radius R to the number of particles N of each species is ... where η$_C$ is the carbon abundance and we are implicitly assuming that all the carbon is in the form of the dominant species in each zone."
* "[I]n any limited country, the species which is most common, that is abound most in individuals, and the species which are most widely diffused within their country (and this is a different consideration from wide range, and to a certain extent from commonness), often give rise to varieties sufficiently well-marked to have been recorded in botanical works. Hence it is the most flourishing, or as they may be called, the dominant species -- those which range widely over the world, are the most diffused in their own country, and are the most numerous in individuals, -- which oftenest produce well-marked varieties, or, as I consider them, incipient species."

## Dominant teams

When the word "team" refers to more than a duality, "dominant team" becomes a relative synonym for dominant group.
* "So far Mt. Lebanon has taken 2 PHUL championships out of the 7 Finals appearances, and has been a dominant team in the Pittsburgh region for many years.", from Wikipedia Mt. Lebanon School District.

## Dominant types

* "new dominant type ... supplanted the previous dominant type"
* "All visibly different colony types were isolated and of dominant colony types, several isolates were taken."

## Dominating groups

"Dominating" appears to have its most common meaning under "government".

## Hegemonic class

* "Thus Dennis Cosgrove, one of the dominant British members of this landscape school, argued that 'in class societies, where surplus production is appropriated by the dominant group, symbolic production is likewise seized as hegemonic class culture to be imposed on all classes' (Cosgrove, 1983, p. 5)" Bold added.

## Higher types

"Lovejoy (1936) discusses how the great Chain of Being was "temporalized" during the 18th century; by this, he has in mind the tendency to think that the natural ordering of living things from those of higher type down to those of lower type also represented an historical progression."

## Highest classes

"Though we generally use the words "classical" and "Classics" in a high-cultural sense, this use is derivative and figuratively loaded. These words derive from the Latin adjective classicus,-a,-um, originally referring to someone belonging to the highest of the five classes of Roman citizens in the division of the Roman people according to property and wealth made by Servius Tullius (Livy 1.43.5; Aulus Gellius 6[7].13.1, 3)."
The most popular meaning of "highest" is "210. TOP". The second most popular meaning is "36. SUPERIORITY". Any highest class may not be a dominant group, unless that which puts them as highest is also a criterion of dominance.
"Servius Tullius was the legendary sixth king of ancient Rome, and the second of its Etruscan dynasty. He reigned 578-535 BC. Roman and Greek sources describe his servile origins and later marriage to a daughter of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, Rome's first Etruscan king, who was assassinated in 579 BC. Servius was variously said to have been the first Roman king to accede without election by the Senate, having gained the throne by popular support, at the contrivance of his mother-in-law; and the first to be elected by the Senate without reference to the people." The classes including the highest class of the centuriate classes were apparently created during rule of Servius Tullius.
"The oldest surviving source for the overall political developments of the Roman kingdom and Republic is Cicero's De republica ("On the State"), written in 44 BC. The main literary sources for Servius' life and achievements are the Roman historian Livy (59 BC – AD 17), whose Ab urbe condita was generally accepted by the Romans as the standard, most authoritative account; Livy's near contemporary Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Plutarch (c.46 – 120 AD); their own sources included works by Quintus Fabius Pictor, Diocles of Peparethus, Quintus Ennius and Cato the Elder. Livy's sources probably included at least some official state records, he excluded what seemed implausible or contradictory traditions, and arranged his material within an overarching chronology. Dionysus and Plutarch offer various alternatives not found in Livy, Livy's own pupil, the etruscologist, historian and emperor Claudius offered yet another, based on Etruscan tradition."
This would put an early origin of "highest class" at 2544 b2k, with reference to the reign of Servius Tullius from 2578 b2k to 2535 b2k, where the most recent date of origin for "highest class" is 2535 b2k. As a relative synonym for dominant group, highest class (classicus) puts the origin of the concept behind dominant group at 2535 b2k, well before the exact usage in 1826, or 174 b2k in application to insect distributions by William Kirby.
"In each case it is found that the lower social classes have mortality rates significantly higher than those of the upper social classes with the mortality rate of the lowest class being approximately twice that of the highest class on a six-category scale."

## Influential groups

* "Finally, and perhaps most importantly, London was the institutional home of the most influential group of astronomers of the period: the Royal Astronomical Society."
* "During the first five years (the 'formative era') the Branch flourished under the guidance of what was collectively the most influential group of amateur astronomers in the country."

## Influential sets

* "Together with Leonard Searle, he wrote an influential set of papers which established that stellar disks are truncated at about four exponential scale-lengths, and that the vertical scale-height of disks is constant with radius."
* "Until now Themo has been best known for an influential set of questions on Aristotle's Meteorologica, which is closely related to similar sets by Nicole Oresme and, putatively, Simon Tunsted."

## Major groups

* "Siah-Posh (black-Robed) Kafirs was the former designation of the major and dominant group of the Hindu Kush Kafirs inhabiting the Bashgul (Kam) valley of the Kafiristan, now called Nuristan."

## Majority groups

"Majority group" is a phrase which may be a cross-over. When "majority" means "superior", "majority group" is a relative synonym for dominant group. But, when "majority" only refers to a "plurality" in context, "majority group" is not a relative synonym for "dominant group".
* "For majority group members, the experience of being in a minority enclave will thus tend to have an aggravating effect on attitudes, resulting in defensive intolerance toward the numerically dominant minority group."

## Master classes

* "Once created, device class objects are registered with an instance of the master class."
* "For ATIC, a possible set of defined classes would be a master class event, and sub-classes header, silicon, scintillator, bgo and track."
* "As they advanced in the knowledge of the dictionary, and in reading, they were promoted to the second company, and afterward to the first of the master's class. from 1811.

## Most important interests

"Even the actual promoters of the most important interests of mankind have seldom anticipated, in idea, the progressive consequences of their own plans."

## Patrician classes

"According to Livy, the first 100 men appointed as senators by Romulus were referred to as "fathers" (patres), and the descendants of those men became the Patrician class. The patricians were distinct from the plebeians because they had wider political influence, at least in the times of the Republic."
"Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance" is a book title verifying dominance by the Patrician class.
"Until the year 445 B.C. [-2445 b2k] a regular marriage (iustae nuptiae) could be contracted only between patricians - members of the ruling class." Bold added.
"'Consequently, the ruling class accumulated all the wealth for themselves, and the slave-population filled the country, while the real Italian population decreased terribly, worn out by poverty, taxation, and military service. And when there was a respite from these things they found themselves unemployed, because the land was owned by rich men who used slaves instead of freemen on their farms.' Whatever the origin of this passage may be, it shows the necessary result of the military expansion of Rome,"

## Predominant groups

* "Sub-dominant group, in entom., in Kirby's system, those groups of insects which either never enter the tropics or those tropical insects whose range does not exceed 50° in the Old World of 43° in the New : in contradistinction to his predominant groups and dominant groups, in the first of which he includes groups extending from the arctic region, where vegetation ceases, to the equator, and in the second those which reach to the tropics but fall short of the polar circles." Bold added.
* "The bacterial members within the dominant group of our clone library belonged to unclassified taxa, while the second predominant group consisted of members of the phylum Proteobacteria." Bold added.

## Predominant types

* "To illustrate the problems that [have] arisen from COSP and representativeness issues, consider a situation where we utilize the raw land use information as 1-km resolution to get the predominant land use type for the 12-km grid cell." Bold added.

## Ruling classes

"The caste-like nature of the Venetian nobility always looms large in the writings of Renaissance observers of the Republic's constitution.$^1$ It was natural that they, and later writers too, should find this quality impressive because from the last years of marco Polo's life until the terrible war with the Turks in the middle of the seventeenth century, the Venetian nobility was remarkable for its policy of exclusiveness. The patricians were organized as a distinct social class with jealously guarded privileges. In order to avoid contamination by inferiors and to keep power in their own hands, they refused to accept new members; they adopted strict rules regarding marriages; and they kept careful birth and marriage records in the famous Golden Books. But the ruling class had not always had this exclusive character."

## Ruling elites

Def. "[t]he nobility, or the hereditary ruling class" is called an aristocracy.
Def. a governing group from the aristocracy is called ruling elites.
"Also using the state apparatus for agencies that serve the ruling elites, such as the security forces, presidential staff, central bank, diplomatic service, customs and collection agencies." Bold added.
"Use of aggressive nationalistic rhetoric by ruling elites, especially destructive forms of communal irredentism or communal solidarity (e.g., "ethnic cleansing", "defending the faith")." Bold added.

## Ruling groups

* An example of this contains "Syria's Ruling, Military Group" and "Causes for Its Dominance", in the title. "[T]he ruling element consists at its core of a close kinship group which draws strength simultaneously, but in decreasing intensity, from a tribe, a sect-class, and an ecologic-cultural division of the people." "[T]he core of the ruling element of Iraq also consists of a kinship group (closely related members of the Begat section of the Albui Nasir tribe); rests essentially on members of a minority sect (Sunni Arabs) and on country rather than city people (on middle and lower middle class families from the country towns of the Arab north-western part of Iraq". The term dominant group does not occur in the article.

## Superior classes

"Then we reach F, the lowest of those yet superior classes of intellect, with which this volume is chiefly concerned."

## Superior sizes

* "The superior size and albedo of Venus completely turn the scale, with the result that Venus at her brightest is about 12 times brighter than Mercury at his brightest."
* "There is no reason to question but that they are simply ordinary meteors, which from their superior size and unusually slow speed have survived to reach the earth's surface."

## The dominants

“While Kanter sees the differentiation between dominants and tokens as originating with the dominant group, it seems logical that such differentiation might also originate with the token group in certain situations. Specifically, when tokens are of a higher social status than dominants, they may be inclined to differentiate themselves from the dominants in order to improve their overall status or to avoid any social stigma which may be associated with the dominants in the larger society.”
“This means that the dominant group were close together in a confined circle while the subdominants were more widely separated around the outside of that circle. We shall expect then that the dominants would fight among themselves more than the subdominants.”
As a group of dominants is likely synonymous with a dominant group, so “the dominants” is a likely synonym for a dominant group.
In German, the word “Dominanten” may mean a dominant or dominants. The phrase “den Dominanten” occurs in 1774 usually referring to “die Dominante” in music. The plural is “die Dominanten” (the dominants). But, “the dominant” translates to “die dominierende”.
A teaching textbook for piano from 1826 contains “Sind die Grundtöne der Dur- und Moll-Tonarten, jedoch ohne die mindeste Beziehung auf ihre Dominanten, durch den Zirkel angesetzt, so werden die Dominanten dann hinterher beigefügt.”
Texts for musical composition contain "the dominants", such as “Doch leide« dieses Berkoth eine Ausnahme, wenn die Dominanten häufig von kommen.” from 1781.
The earliest occurrence so far for "the dominants" comes from 1757, “so sind solche entweder tonische Noten, Dominanten, oder Unterdominanren, und die Dominanten können simple oder tonische Dominanten seyn.”

## Upper classes

* "[S]ince their rise to power, an upper class has been differentiating itself from the rest of the community and, within the ranks of this class, even a group of millionaires, waxing rich from fat commissions on state contracts, has reared its head." Bold added.

## Upper departments

The most popular usage of the word "department" is category "998. JURISDICTION". The second most popular usage of "jurisdiction" is category 739. If an author's intended usage is closer to category 739, then "upper department" may be a relative synonym for dominant group.
"For the impression of the commercial arts is often conspicuous in the upper departments of life, before it reaches those of inferior condition; but the circle gradually widens." Neither word "dominant" nor "group" appears in the text of Dunbar's book from 1780, digitized by Google.

## Hypotheses

* Dominant group may have been first used in 1826, but at least one of its synonyms may have occurred in the oldest human language.