Word: group Part of Speech: noun Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *grewbʰ-der. Proto-Germanic *kruppazder. Frankish *kruppbor. Vulgar Latin *cruppus Italian gruppobor. French groupebor. ▲ Italian gruppobor. English group From French groupe (“cluster, group”), from Italian gruppo, groppo (“a knot, heap, group, bag (of money)”). In the "group theory" sense, calqued from French groupe, a term coined by the young French mathematician Évariste Galois in 1830. Cognate with German Kropf (“crop, craw, bunch”); Old English cropp, croppa (“cluster, bunch, sprout, flower, berry, ear of corn, crop”) (whence English crop); Dutch krop (“craw”), Icelandic kroppr (“hump, bunch”). Doublet of crop and croup. Pronunciation: /ɡɹuːp/, /ɡɹup/, /ɡɹʉp/ 1. A number of things or persons being in some relation to one another. Example: 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. Example: 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. A set with an associative binary operation, under which there exists an identity element, and such that each element has an inverse. Example: Throughout this section, we shall assume the existence of finitely presented groups with unsolvable word problem. Example: In this chapter we give some examples of Fuchsian groups. The most interesting and important ones are the so-called "arithmetic" Fuchsian groups, i.e., discrete subgroups of PSL(2,R) obtained by some "arithmetic" operations. One such construction we have already seen: if we choose all matrices of SL(2,R) with integer coefficients, then the corresponding elements of PSL(2,R) form the modular group PSL(2,Z). 3. An effective divisor on a curve. Labels: archaic 4. A (usually small) group of people who perform music together. Example: Did you see the new jazz group? 5. A small number (up to about fifty) of galaxies that are near each other. 6. A column in the periodic table of chemical elements. 7. A functional group. Example: Nitro is an electron-withdrawing group. 8. A subset of a culture or of a society. 9. An air force formation. 10. A collection of formations or rock strata. 11. A number of users with the same rights with respect to accession, modification, and execution of files, computers and peripherals. 12. An element of an espresso machine from which hot water pours into the portafilter. 13. 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. 14. A set of teams playing each other in the same division, while not during the same period playing any teams that belong to other sets in the division. Example: It is the third of eight matches that Spain will play in Group I, but the coach Vicente del Bosque has described it as being more akin to the first leg of a cup semi-final. 15. A commercial organization. 16. Group therapy. Labels: uncountable Example: Aside from occasional moments of belligerence, he was a pretty affable guy. I rather liked him and, I guess, wanted him to like me. But his affability also included the odd "faggot" joke, which left me dubious over talking with him about being gay, even in "group."