■ noun [treated as sing. or plural ]
1》 a number of people or things located, gathered, or classed together.
2》 a number of musicians who play popular music together.
3》 Chemistry a set of elements occupying a column in the periodic table and having broadly similar properties.
4》 Chemistry a combination of atoms having a recognizable identity in a number of compounds.
5》 Mathematics a set of elements, together with an associative binary operation, which contains an inverse for each element and an identity element.
6》 a division of an air force, usually consisting of two or more stations.
■ verb place in or form a ~ or ~s.
Derivatives
~age noun
~ing noun
Origin
C17: from Fr. ~e , from Ital. gruppo , of Gmc origin; related to crop .