commonwealth

Pluralcommonwealths

1. 1
   group of nationsproper noun · Commonwealth

   A loose confederation of nations based around the former British Empire, formally called the Commonwealth of Nations.

   Trade ministers from across the Commonwealth met to discuss lowering tariffs between member states.

   The country was suspended from the Commonwealth after its army seized power.

   Note

   Membership is not strictly a matter of imperial history: Mozambique joined in 1995 without ever having been part of the British Empire. The word also names a status for people, and a Commonwealth citizen can be eligible to vote in United Kingdom elections.

2. 2
   whole societynouncountable

   A whole society, especially a secular one, organized as a political community or state.

   Philosophers have long debated what a just commonwealth owes its poorest members.

   Church leaders were expected to stay out of the affairs of the commonwealth.

   Similarstate, polity, society

   Note

   The sense took shape with the spelling common-wealth around 1520, which William Tyndale used for secular society where others wrote publike weal; his 1526 New Testament gives comen welth for the Greek politeía. Shakespeare's Gonzalo, in The Tempest, uses it for an imagined state he would run "by contraries," admitting no trade and no magistrate.

3. 3
   republicnouncountable

   A republic, a state in which power rests with the people rather than with a monarch; often capitalized as Commonwealth.

   After the revolution, the assembly abolished the crown and declared the nation a commonwealth.

   The pamphlet called for a free Commonwealth, with no king and no hereditary lords.

   Similarrepublic

   Oppositemonarchy, kingdom

   Note

   In 1649 an Act of the Long Parliament declared the people of England and all its dominions a Commonwealth, the act that founded the kingless English state. Where the broader political sense fits any state, this one sets a commonwealth against a monarchy.

4. 4
   Australiaproper noun · CommonwealthAustralia

   Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, often meaning its federal government in particular.

   The Premier accused the Commonwealth of short-changing Victoria on hospital funding.

   She was charged with defrauding the Commonwealth after claiming Centrelink payments she wasn't entitled to.

   Note

   Australians use it to tell the national government apart from the states, as when a state Premier accuses the Commonwealth over hospital money. It is at home in legal language too: false welfare claims amount to defrauding the Commonwealth. Outside Australia, readers may take the word to mean the association of nations, so the full name is the safer choice there.

5. 5
   English historyproper noun · CommonwealthhistoricalBritish

   The English state of 1649 to 1653, and the combined state of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1653 to 1660, both governed without a king.

   Under the Commonwealth, many couples were married by a magistrate rather than a priest.

   Royalist families who had lost their estates under the Commonwealth hoped to recover them after the Restoration.

   Note

   British historians write it with a capital and the definite article: under the Commonwealth, during the Commonwealth. Interregnum and Protectorate overlap with it without matching it exactly, so a history of the years between kings may use all three; Commonwealth names the state, while Interregnum names the gap in the monarchy.

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