COMMONWEALTH • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Commonwealth

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/kˈɑmənwˌɛlθ/ Listen

noun

Commonwealth n.

A state; a body politic consisting of a certain number of men, united, by compact or tacit agreement, under one form of government and system of laws. "The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth." Note: This term is applied to governments which are considered as free or popular, but rarely, or improperly, to an absolute government. The word signifies, strictly, the common well-being or happiness; and hence, a form of government in which the general welfare is regarded rather than the welfare of any class.

The whole body of people in a state; the public.

(Eng. Hist.) Specifically, the form of government established on the death of Charles I., in 1649, which existed under Oliver Cromwell and his son Richard, ending with the abdication of the latter in 1659.

Synonyms: State; realm; republic.

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Etymology of 'Commonwealth'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Commonwealth" Quotes from Famous Books

... no sign, and soon after my grand-uncle's burying Uncle Christian and Master Pernhart had set forth for Augsburg on some privy matters of the town council. Yet we could do nought but submit, by reason that we knew that every good citizen thinks of the weal of the Commonwealth before all else. ...

— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the Rhode Island Legislature once with Lucy Stone and she unrolled with her peculiar persuasive power the wrong laws which existed in that commonwealth in regard to women. After the hearing was over the chairman of that committee, a judge who had served on it for years, said to her: "Mrs. Stone, all that you have stated this morning is true, and I am ashamed to think that I, who have ...

— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... to race; held sacred out of reverence for their fathers; at length it was deemed sacrilege to doubt these pandects in any one particular; even the errors, that had crept into them with time, were beheld with reverential awe; he that ventured to reason upon them, was looked upon as an enemy to the commonwealth; as one whose impiety drew down upon them the vengeance of these adored beings, to which alone imagination had given birth; not contented with adopting the rituals, with following the ceremonies invented by themselves, one community ...

— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... been denied that the prevalence of Neo-Malthusian practices counts at all.[115] Thus while Coghlan, the Government Statistician of New South Wales, concludes that the decline in the birth-rate in the Australian Commonwealth was due to "the art of applying artificial checks to conception," McLean, the Government Statistician of Victoria, concludes that it was "due mainly to natural causes." [116] He points out that when the birth-rate ...

— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... heard and few were members, designed at best to accomplish some particular good for the people, at all events meeting regularly to sniff the approach of tyranny in the abstract, academically safeguarding the commonwealth by discussing ...

— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker

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