Noun: common
| Singular | common |
| Plural | commons |
Sample Sentences
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The hovel stood in the centre of what had once been a vegetable garden, but was now a patch of rank weeds. Surrounding this, almost like a zareba, was an irregular ring of gorse and brambles, an unclaimed vestige of the original common. [1944, Miles Burton, chapter 5, in The Three Corpse Trick:]
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Throughout the land there is a great variation in the shape and size of village greens, from the many of pocket-handkerchief size to a roadside common of 20 acres or more - as at Lindfield in West Sussex. [1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, pages 264-265:]
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the weal o' the common [c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:]
Nouns inflected like common
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *mey-
3. Proto-Indo-European *ḱom-moy-ni-s
4. Proto-Italic *kommoinis
5. Old Latin comoinis
6. Latin commūnis
7. Anglo-Norman comunbor.
8. Middle English comun
9. English common
10. From Middle English comun, from Anglo-Norman comun, from Old French comun (rare in the Gallo-Romance languages, but reinforced as a Carolingian calque of Proto-West Germanic *gamainī (“common”) in Old French), from Latin commūnis (“common, public, general”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱom-moy-ni-s (“held in common”), from Proto-Indo-European *mey- (“to exchange, change”). Displaced native Middle English imene, ȝemǣne (“common, general, universal”) (from Old English ġemǣne (“common, universal”)), Middle English mene, mǣne (“mean, common”) (also from Old English ġemǣne (“common, universal”)), Middle English samen, somen (“in common, together”) (from Old English samen (“together”)). Doublet of gmina and mean. See: Latin Nouns '
commūnis', Middle English Nouns '
imene', Old English Nouns '
ġemǣne', Middle English Nouns '
mene', Old English Nouns '
ġemǣne'.