community
    n 1: a group of people living in a particular local area; "the
         team is drawn from all parts of the community"
    2: common ownership; "they shared a community of possessions"
    3: a group of nations having common interests; "they hoped to
       join the NATO community"
    4: agreement as to goals; "the preachers and the bootleggers
       found they had a community of interests" [syn: community,
       community of interests]
    5: a district where people live; occupied primarily by private
       residences [syn: residential district, residential area,
       community]
    6: (ecology) a group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the
       same region and interacting with each other [syn:
       community, biotic community]

Community \Com*mu"ni*ty\, n.; pl. Communities. [L. communitas:
   cf. OF. communit['e]. Cf. Commonalty, and see Common.]
   1. Common possession or enjoyment; participation; as, a
      community of goods.
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            The original community of all things. --Locke.
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            An unreserved community of thought and feeling. --W.
                                                  Irving.
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   2. A body of people having common rights, privileges, or
      interests, or living in the same place under the same laws
      and regulations; as, a community of monks. Hence a number
      of animals living in a common home or with some apparent
      association of interests.
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            Creatures that in communities exist.  --Wordsworth.
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   3. Society at large; a commonwealth or state; a body politic;
      the public, or people in general.
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            Burdens upon the poorer classes of the community.
                                                  --Hallam.
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   Note: In this sense, the term should be used with the
         definite article; as, the interests of the community.
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   4. Common character; likeness. [R.]
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            The essential community of nature between organic
            growth and inorganic growth.          --H. Spencer.
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   5. Commonness; frequency. [Obs.]
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            Eyes . . . sick and blunted with community. --Shak.
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COMMUNITY. This word has several meanings; when used in common parlance it 
signifies the body of the people. 
     2. In the civil law, by community is understood corporations, or bodies 
politic. Dig. 3, 4. 
     3. In the French law, which has been adopted in this respect in 
Louisiana, Civ. Code, art. 2371, community is a species of partnership, 
which a man and woman contract when they are lawfully married to each other. 
It consists of the profits of all, the effects of which the husband has the 
administration and enjoyment, either of right or in fact; of the produce of 
the reciprocal industry and labor of both husband and wife, and of the 
estates which they may acquire during the marriage, either by donations made 
jointly to them, or by purchase, or in any other similar way, even although 
the purchase he made in the name of one of the two, and not of both; because 
in that case the period of time when the purchase is made is alone attended 
to, and not the person who made the purchase. 10 L. R. 146; Id. 172, 181; 1 
N. S. 325; 4 N. S. 212. The debts contracted during the marriage enter into 
the community, and must be acquitted out of the common fund; but not the 
debts contracted before the marriage. 
     4. The community is either, first, conventional, or that which is 
formed by an express agreement in the contract of marriage itself; by this 
contract the legal community may be modified, as to the proportions which 
each shall take, or as to the things which shall compose it; Civ. Code of L. 
art. 2393; second, legal, which takes place when the parties make no 
agreement on this subject in the contract of marriage; when it is regulated 
by the law of the domicil they had at the time of marriage. 
     5. The effects which compose the community of gains, are divided into 
two equal portions between the heirs, at the dissolution of the marriage. 
Civ. Code of L. art. 2375. See Poth. h.t.; Toull. h.t.; Civ. Code of Lo. 
tit. 6, c. 2, s. 4. 
     6. In another sense, community is the right which all men have, 
according to the laws of nature, to use all things. Wolff, Inst. Sec. 186.