Club

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /klʌb/

Definitions

1. A group of people who regularly meet to pursue a shared interest, or a heavy stick used as a weapon
2. An organization of individuals who gather for mutual enjoyment or a solid piece of wood often used to strike
3. a venue for socializing such as a nightspot or a device for hitting a baseball

Etymology: The noun "club" started out as a lump, not a group of people. Its ancestor in Proto-Germanic was "*klumpô," which meant a clip or clasp, but also a lump, clump, or block of wood. That lumpy sense survived in the weapon: the Middle English "clubbe," borrowed from Old Norse "klubba" or "klumba," meant a cudgel, a heavy stick thickened at one end and swung to strike. The same root gave English "clump" and "cloud," which share the sense of a dense, rounded mass. The shift to a social group came much later and is not traced in the source's detail, so the path from wooden cudgel to gathering of members is best understood as a gradual extension of the idea of a body held together, a bunched mass of people rather than of wood. The word's relatives across Germanic languages keep the lump sense alive too: German "Kolben" means a club, bulb, or butt, and Middle Low German "kolve" meant a bulb.

Synonyms: association, society, organization, group, fellowship

Antonyms: individual, lone, solitary, disassociation, division