Groupe

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A collection of individuals or entities forming a single unit or organization
2. a set of people sharing common objectives or interests
3. an assembly of items categorized together based on shared characteristics

Etymology: The word "groupe" is simply an older spelling of "group," and its story starts with a knot. Italian "gruppo" and "groppo" meant a knot, a heap, or a bundle, and the idea of things gathered tightly together carried over into French as "groupe," meaning a cluster or group. English borrowed it from French and it displaced the native Old English "hād," which meant tribe or group. The English word is also a doublet of "crop" and "croup." All three descend from a shared root, and the Old English "cropp" meant a cluster, bunch, or sprout, the same sense of things bunched up that sits behind the Italian knot. Mathematics gave the word a sharper meaning. In 1830, the young French mathematician Évariste Galois used "groupe" for a collection of operations closed under combination, and English adopted the mathematical sense by calque from that French usage.

Synonyms: group, band, ensemble, cluster, party