Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A group of emigrants or their descendants who settle in a distant territory but remain subject to or closely associated with the parent country.
  • noun A territory thus settled.
  • noun A region politically controlled by a distant country; a dependency.
  • noun A group of people with the same interests or ethnic origin concentrated in a particular area.
  • noun The area occupied by such a group.
  • noun The British colonies that became the original 13 states of the United States.
  • noun A group of people who have been institutionalized in a relatively remote area.
  • noun A group of the same kind of animals, plants, or one-celled organisms living or growing together.
  • noun A visible growth of microorganisms, usually in a solid or semisolid nutrient medium.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A company or body of people who migrate from their native country or home to a new province, country, or district, to cultivate and inhabit it, but remain subject to or intimately connected with the parent state; also, the descendants of such settlers so long as the connection with the mother country is retained.
  • noun The country or district planted or colonized.
  • noun A number of persons of a particular nation, taken collectively, residing temporarily or indefinitely in a foreign city or country: as, the American colony in Paris.
  • noun A number of animals or plants living or growing colonially.
  • To colonize.
  • noun A circumscribed aggregation of bacteria of the same species in artificial culture.
  • noun In sociology, a group of individuals of like natures or having a common interest, living by themselves as a self-sufficient social organization.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A company of people transplanted from their mother country to a remote province or country, and remaining subject to the jurisdiction of the parent state.
  • noun The district or country colonized; a settlement.
  • noun a territory subject to the ruling governmental authority of another country and not a part of the ruling country.
  • noun A company of persons from the same country sojourning in a foreign city or land.
  • noun (Nat. Hist.) A number of animals or plants living or growing together, beyond their usual range.
  • noun (Bot.) A cell family or group of common origin, mostly of unicellular organisms, esp. among the lower algæ. They may adhere in chains or groups, or be held together by a gelatinous envelope.
  • noun (Zoöl.) A cluster or aggregation of zooids of any compound animal, as in the corals, hydroids, certain tunicates, etc.
  • noun (Zoöl.) A community of social insects, as ants, bees, etc.
  • noun (Microbiology) a group of microorganisms originating as the descendents of one individual cell, growing on a gelled growth medium, as of gelatin or agar; especially, such a group that has grown to a sufficient number to be visible to the naked eye.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A settlement of emigrants who move to a new place, but remain culturally tied to their original place
  • noun Region or governmental unit created by another country and generally ruled by another country.
  • noun A group of people with the same interests or ethnic origin concentrated in a particular geographic area
  • noun A group of organisms of same or different species living together in close association.
  • noun A collective noun for rabbits.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a group of organisms of the same type living or growing together
  • noun a geographical area politically controlled by a distant country
  • noun (microbiology) a group of organisms grown from a single parent cell
  • noun a place where a group of people with the same interest or occupation are concentrated
  • noun one of the 13 British colonies that formed the original states of the United States
  • noun a body of people who settle far from home but maintain ties with their homeland; inhabitants remain nationals of their home state but are not literally under the home state's system of government

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English colonie, from Latin colōnia, from colōnus, settler, from colere, to cultivate; see kwel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin colōnia ("colony"), from colōnus ("farmer; colonist"), from colō ("till, cultivate, worship"), from earlier *quelō, from Proto-Indo-European *kʷel- (“to move; to turn (around)”).

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