colony

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 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.
• To colonize.
• 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.

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