Common

7 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Common \Com"mon\, a. [Compar. {Commoner}; superl. {Commonest}.]
     [OE. commun, comon, OF. comun, F. commun, fr. L. communis;
     com- + munis ready to be of service; cf. Skr. mi to make
     fast, set up, build, Goth. gamains common, G. gemein, and E.
     mean low, common. Cf. {Immunity}, {Commune}, n. & v.]
     1. Belonging or relating equally, or similarly, to more than


        one; as, you and I have a common interest in the property.
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              Though life and sense be common to men and brutes.
                                                    --Sir M. Hale.
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     2. Belonging to or shared by, affecting or serving, all the
        members of a class, considered together; general; public;
        as, properties common to all plants; the common schools;
        the Book of Common Prayer.
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              Such actions as the common good requireth. --Hooker.
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              The common enemy of man.              --Shak.
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     3. Often met with; usual; frequent; customary.
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              Grief more than common grief.         --Shak.
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     4. Not distinguished or exceptional; inconspicuous; ordinary;
        plebeian; -- often in a depreciatory sense.
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              The honest, heart-felt enjoyment of common life.
                                                    --W. Irving.
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              This fact was infamous
              And ill beseeming any common man,
              Much more a knight, a captain and a leader. --Shak.
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              Above the vulgar flight of common souls. --A.
                                                    Murphy.
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     5. Profane; polluted. [Obs.]
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              What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.
                                                    --Acts x. 15.
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     6. Given to habits of lewdness; prostitute.
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              A dame who herself was common.        --L'Estrange.
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     {Common bar} (Law) Same as {Blank bar}, under {Blank}.
  
     {Common barrator} (Law), one who makes a business of
        instigating litigation.
  
     {Common Bench}, a name sometimes given to the English Court
        of Common Pleas.
  
     {Common brawler} (Law), one addicted to public brawling and
        quarreling. See {Brawler}.
  
     {Common carrier} (Law), one who undertakes the office of
        carrying (goods or persons) for hire. Such a carrier is
        bound to carry in all cases when he has accommodation, and
        when his fixed price is tendered, and he is liable for all
        losses and injuries to the goods, except those which
        happen in consequence of the act of God, or of the enemies
        of the country, or of the owner of the property himself.
        
  
     {Common chord} (Mus.), a chord consisting of the fundamental
        tone, with its third and fifth.
  
     {Common council}, the representative (legislative) body, or
        the lower branch of the representative body, of a city or
        other municipal corporation.
  
     {Common crier}, the crier of a town or city.
  
     {Common divisor} (Math.), a number or quantity that divides
        two or more numbers or quantities without a remainder; a
        common measure.
  
     {Common gender} (Gram.), the gender comprising words that may
        be of either the masculine or the feminine gender.
  
     {Common law}, a system of jurisprudence developing under the
        guidance of the courts so as to apply a consistent and
        reasonable rule to each litigated case. It may be
        superseded by statute, but unless superseded it controls.
        --Wharton.
  
     Note: It is by others defined as the unwritten law
           (especially of England), the law that receives its
           binding force from immemorial usage and universal
           reception, as ascertained and expressed in the
           judgments of the courts. This term is often used in
           contradistinction from {statute law}. Many use it to
           designate a law common to the whole country. It is also
           used to designate the whole body of English (or other)
           law, as distinguished from its subdivisions, local,
           civil, admiralty, equity, etc. See {Law}.
  
     {Common lawyer}, one versed in common law.
  
     {Common lewdness} (Law), the habitual performance of lewd
        acts in public.
  
     {Common multiple} (Arith.) See under {Multiple}.
  
     {Common noun} (Gram.), the name of any one of a class of
        objects, as distinguished from a proper noun (the name of
        a particular person or thing).
  
     {Common nuisance} (Law), that which is deleterious to the
        health or comfort or sense of decency of the community at
        large.
  
     {Common pleas}, one of the three superior courts of common
        law at Westminster, presided over by a chief justice and
        four puisne judges. Its jurisdiction is confined to civil
        matters. Courts bearing this title exist in several of the
        United States, having, however, in some cases, both civil
        and criminal jurisdiction extending over the whole State.
        In other States the jurisdiction of the common pleas is
        limited to a county, and it is sometimes called a {county
        court}. Its powers are generally defined by statute.
  
     {Common prayer}, the liturgy of the Church of England, or of
        the Protestant Episcopal church of the United States,
        which all its clergy are enjoined to use. It is contained
        in the Book of Common Prayer.
  
     {Common school}, a school maintained at the public expense,
        and open to all.
  
     {Common scold} (Law), a woman addicted to scolding
        indiscriminately, in public.
  
     {Common seal}, a seal adopted and used by a corporation.
  
     {Common sense}.
        (a) A supposed sense which was held to be the common bond
            of all the others. [Obs.] --Trench.
        (b) Sound judgment. See under {Sense}.
  
     {Common time} (Mus.), that variety of time in which the
        measure consists of two or of four equal portions.
  
     {In common}, equally with another, or with others; owned,
        shared, or used, in community with others; affecting or
        affected equally.
  
     {Out of the common}, uncommon; extraordinary.
  
     {Tenant in common}, one holding real or personal property in
        common with others, having distinct but undivided
        interests. See {Joint tenant}, under {Joint}.
  
     {To make common cause with}, to join or ally one's self with.
  
     Syn: General; public; popular; national; universal; frequent;
          ordinary; customary; usual; familiar; habitual; vulgar;
          mean; trite; stale; threadbare; commonplace. See
          {Mutual}, {Ordinary}, {General}.
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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Common \Com"mon\, n.
     1. The people; the community. [Obs.] "The weal o' the
        common." --Shak.
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     2. An inclosed or uninclosed tract of ground for pleasure,
        for pasturage, etc., the use of which belongs to the
        public; or to a number of persons.
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     3. (Law) The right of taking a profit in the land of another,
        in common either with the owner or with other persons; --
        so called from the community of interest which arises
        between the claimant of the right and the owner of the
        soil, or between the claimants and other commoners
        entitled to the same right.
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     {Common appendant}, a right belonging to the owners or
        occupiers of arable land to put commonable beasts upon the
        waste land in the manor where they dwell.
  
     {Common appurtenant}, a similar right applying to lands in
        other manors, or extending to other beasts, besides those
        which are generally commonable, as hogs.
  
     {Common because of vicinage} or {Common because of
     neighborhood}, the right of the inhabitants of each of two
        townships, lying contiguous to each other, which have
        usually intercommoned with one another, to let their
        beasts stray into the other's fields. - 
  
     {Common in gross} or {Common at large}, a common annexed to a
        man's person, being granted to him and his heirs by deed;
        or it may be claimed by prescriptive right, as by a parson
        of a church or other corporation sole. --Blackstone.
  
     {Common of estovers}, the right of taking wood from another's
        estate.
  
     {Common of pasture}, the right of feeding beasts on the land
        of another. --Burill.
  
     {Common of piscary}, the right of fishing in waters belonging
        to another.
  
     {Common of turbary}, the right of digging turf upon the
        ground of another.
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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Common \Com"mon\, v. i.
     1. To converse together; to discourse; to confer. [Obs.]
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              Embassadors were sent upon both parts, and divers
              means of entreaty were commoned of.   --Grafton.
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     2. To participate. [Obs.] --Sir T. More.
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     3. To have a joint right with others in common ground.
        --Johnson.
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     4. To board together; to eat at a table in common.
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From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  common
       adj 1: belonging to or participated in by a community as a whole;
              public; "for the common good"; "common lands are set
              aside for use by all members of a community" [ant: {individual}]
       2: of no special distinction or quality; widely known or
          commonly encountered; average or ordinary or usual; "the
          common man"; "a common sailor"; "the common cold"; "a
          common nuisance"; "followed common procedure"; "it is
          common knowledge that she lives alone"; "the common
          housefly"; "a common brand of soap" [ant: {uncommon}]
       3: common to or shared by two or more parties; "a common
          friend"; "the mutual interests of management and labor"
          [syn: {mutual}]
       4: commonly encountered; "a common (or familiar) complaint";
          "the usual greeting" [syn: {usual}]
       5: being or characteristic of or appropriate to everyday
          language; "common parlance"; "a vernacular term";
          "vernacular speakers"; "the vulgar tongue of the masses";
          "the technical and vulgar names for an animal species"
          [syn: {vernacular}, {vulgar}]
       6: of or associated with the great masses of people; "the
          common people in those days suffered greatly"; "behavior
          that branded him as common"; "his square plebeian nose";
          "a vulgar and objectionable person"; "the unwashed masses"
          [syn: {plebeian}, {vulgar}, {unwashed}]
       7: of low or inferior quality or value; "of what coarse metal
          ye are molded"- Shakespeare; "produced...the common cloths
          used by the poorer population" [syn: {coarse}]
       8: lacking refinement or cultivation or taste; "he had coarse
          manners but a first-rate mind"; "behavior that branded him
          as common"; "an untutored and uncouth human being"; "an
          uncouth soldier--a real tough guy"; "appealing to the
          vulgar taste for violence"; "the vulgar display of the
          newly rich" [syn: {coarse}, {rough-cut}, {uncouth}, {vulgar}]
       9: to be expected; standard; "common decency"
       n : a piece of open land for recreational use in an urban area;
           "they went for a walk in the park" [syn: {park}, {commons},
            {green}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  427 Moby Thesaurus words for "common":
     Astroturf, Attic, Babbittish, Mickey Mouse, Philistine, Spartan,
     absolute interest, accustomed, adequate, all right,
     artificial turf, ascetic, associated, austere, average,
     back-number, bald, banal, bare, base, baseborn, beggarly,
     below the salt, beneath contempt, benefit, besetting, bewhiskered,
     bourgeois, bowling green, breezy, bromidic, campy, candid, casual,
     central, chaste, cheap, cheesy, civic, civil, claim, classic,
     classical, cliched, coacting, coactive, coadjutant, coadjuvant,
     coarse, cockney, coefficient, collaborative, collective,
     collectivist, collectivistic, colloquial, collusive, combined,
     commensal, commonage, commoners, commonly known, commonplace,
     commons, communal, communalist, communalistic, communist,
     communistic, communitarian, community, commutual, concerted,
     concordant, concurrent, concurring, conjoint, conjunct, conniving,
     contemptible, contingent interest, conventional, conversational,
     cooperant, cooperating, cooperative, corny, corporate,
     cosmopolitan, crummy, current, customary, cut-and-dried, declasse,
     defiled, demeaning, despicable, direct, disadvantaged, dominant,
     down-to-earth, dry, dull, easement, ecumenic, epidemic,
     equitable interest, equity, estate, everyday, fade, fairway,
     familiar, fellow, flat, fourth-class, frank, frequent,
     frequentative, fusty, garden, garden-variety, gaudy, general,
     generic, gimcracky, golf course, golf links, good, grassplot,
     green, greenyard, grounds, habitual, hack, hackney, hackneyed,
     harmonious, harmonized, high-camp, holding, homely, homespun,
     household, humble, humdrum, in common, in the shade, inferior,
     informal, infra dig, insipid, interest, intermediary, intermediate,
     international, irregular, joint, junior, kitschy, lawn, lean, less,
     lesser, like, limitation, low, low-camp, low-class, low-grade,
     low-pressure, low-quality, low-test, lowborn, lowbred, lower,
     lowly, many, many times, matter-of-fact, mean, medial, median,
     mediocre, medium, meretricious, middle-class, middle-of-the-road,
     middling, minor, miserable, moderate, modest, moth-eaten, mundane,
     musty, mutual, national, natural, neat, no great shakes,
     nonclerical, noncompetitive, nondescript, nonstandard, normal,
     normative, not rare, notorious, of common occurrence, oft-repeated,
     oftentime, old hat, open, ordinary, ornery, overused, paltry,
     pandemic, paradise, park, part, pathetic, pedestrian, people,
     percentage, pitiable, pitiful, plain, plain-speaking, plain-spoken,
     plastic, platitudinous, plaza, pleasance, pleasure garden,
     pleasure ground, plebeian, plebeians, poetryless, polluted, poor,
     pop, populace, popular, predominant, predominating, prescriptive,
     prevailing, prevalent, proletarian, prosaic, prosing, prosy,
     proverbial, public, public park, punk, pure, pure and simple,
     putting green, rampant, rank and file, reciprocal, recurrent,
     regnant, regular, regulation, reigning, relaxed, repetitious,
     respective, rife, right, right of entry, routine, rubbishy, rude,
     ruling, run-of-mine, run-of-the-mill, running, rustic, sad,
     satisfactory, scrubby, scruffy, scummy, scurvy, scuzzy,
     second rank, second string, second-best, second-class, second-rate,
     secondary, seedy, servile, set, settlement, severe, shabby,
     shabby-genteel, shared, shoddy, similar, simple, simple-speaking,
     sleazy, sober, social, socialistic, societal, sorry, spare, spoken,
     square, stake, stale, standard, stark, state, stereotyped, stock,
     straightforward, strict settlement, sub, subaltern, subject,
     subordinate, subservient, substandard, suburban, sufficient,
     supranational, symbiotic, synergetic, synergic, synergistic, tacky,
     talked-about, talked-of, tatty, thick-coming, third estate,
     third rank, third string, third-class, third-estate, third-rate,
     threadbare, timeworn, tinny, tired, tiresome, title, tolerable,
     trashy, trite, truistic, trumpery, trust, two-for-a-cent,
     two-for-a-penny, two-way, twopenny, twopenny-halfpenny, typical,
     unadorned, unaffected, unclean, uncompetitive, unconstrained,
     underprivileged, undistinguished, uneducated, unembellished,
     uneventful, unexceptionable, unexceptional, unexciting, unfussy,
     ungenteel, unidealistic, unimaginative, unimpassioned,
     unimpeachable, uninteresting, universal, universally admitted,
     universally recognized, unliterary, unnoteworthy, unoriginal,
     unpoetic, unpoetical, unrefined, unremarkable, unreserved,
     unromantic, unspectacular, unstudied, unvarnished, use, usual,
     valueless, vapid, vernacular, vested interest, vile, village green,
     vulgar, warmed-over, well-kenned, well-known, well-recognized,
     well-understood, well-worn, widely known, wonted, workaday,
     workday, worn, worn out, worn thin, worthless, wretched
  
  

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  COMMON. or right of common, English law. An encorporeal hereditament, which 
  consists in a profit which a man has in the lands of another. 12 S. & R. 32; 
  10 Wend. R. 647; 11 John. R. 498; 2 Bouv. Inst. 1640, et seq. 
       2. Common is of four sorts; of pasture, piscary, turbary and estovers. 
  Finch's Law, 157; Co. Litt. 122; 2 Inst. 86; 2 Bl. Com. 32. 
       3. - 1. Common of pasture is a right of feeding one's beasts on 
  another's land, and is either appendant, appurtenant, or in gross. 
       4. Common appendant is of common right, and it may be claimed in 
  pleading as appendant, without laying a prescription. Hargr. note to 2 Inst. 
  122, a note. 
       5. Rights of common appurtenant to the claimant's land are altogether 
  independent of the tenure, and do not arise from any absolute necessity; but 
  may be annexed to lands in other lordships, or extended to other beasts 
  besides. such as are generally commonable. 
       6. Common in gross, or at large, is such as is neither appendant nor 
  appurtenant to land, but is annexed to a man's person. All these species of 
  pasturable common, may be and usually are limited to number and time; but 
  there are also commons without stint, which last all the year. 2 Bl. Com. 
  34. 
       7. - 2. Common of piscary is the liberty of fishing in another man's 
  water. lb. See Fishery. 
       8. - 3. Common of turbary is the liberty of digging turf in another 
  man's ground. Ib. 
       9.-4. Common of estovers is the liberty of taking necessary wood-for 
  the use or furniture of a house or farm from another man's estate. Ib.; 10 
  Wend. R. 639. See Estovers. 
      10. The right of common is little known in the United States, yet there 
  are some regulations to be found in relation to this subject. The 
  constitution of Illinois provides for the continuance of certain commons in 
  that state. Const. art. 8, s. 8. 
      11. All unappropriated lands on the Chesapeake Bay, on the Shore of the 
  sea, or of any river or creek, and the bed of any river or creek, in the 
  eastern parts of the commonwealth, ungranted and used as common, it is 
  declared by statute in Virginia, shall remain so, and not be subject to 
  grant. 1 Virg. Rev. C. 142. 
      12. In most of the cities and towns in the United States, there are 
  considerable tracts of land appropriated to public use. These commons were 
  generally laid out with the cities or towns where they are found, either by 
  the original proprietors or by the early inhabitants. Vide 2 Pick. Rep. 475; 
  12 S. & R. 32; 2 Dane's. Ab. 610; 14 Mass. R. 440; 6 Verm. 355. See, in 
  general, Vin. Abr. Common; Bac. Abr. Common; Com. Dig. Common; Stark. Ev. 
  part 4, p. 383; Cruise on Real Property, h.t.; Metc. & Perk. Dig. Common, 
  and Common lands and General fields. 
  
  

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  COMMON, TENANTS IN. Tenants in common are such as hold an estate, real or 
  personal, by several distinct titles, but by a unity of possession. Vide 
  Tenant in common; Estate in common.