MUTUAL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Mutual

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/mjˈutʃuəl/ Listen

adjective

Mutual adj.

Reciprocally acting or related; reciprocally receiving and giving; reciprocally given and received; reciprocal; interchanged; as, a mutual love, advantage, assistance, aversion, etc. "Conspiracy and mutual promise." "Happy in our mutual help, And mutual love." "A certain shyness on such subjects, which was mutual between the sisters."

Possessed, experienced, or done by two or more persons or things at the same time; common; joint; as, mutual happiness; a mutual effort. "A vast accession of misery and woe from the mutual weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth." Note: This use of mutual as synonymous with common is inconsistent with the idea of interchange, or reciprocal relation, which properly belongs to it; but the word has been so used by many writers of high authority. The present tendency is toward a careful discrimination. "Mutual, as Johnson will tell us, means something reciprocal, a giving and taking. How could people have mutual ancestors?"

Mutual insurance, agreement among a number of persons to insure each other against loss, as by fire, death, or accident.

Mutual insurance company, one which does a business of insurance on the mutual principle, the policy holders sharing losses and profits pro rata.

Synonyms: Reciprocal; interchanged; common.

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Etymology of 'Mutual'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Mutual" Quotes from Famous Books

... Mutual satisfaction resulted from the agreement. Schulenberg's patrons now knew what the food they ate was called even if its nature sometimes puzzled them. And Sarah had food during a cold, dull winter, which was the ...

— The Four Million • O. Henry

... established themselves on the eastern coast, in the forementioned countries, an immense rampart, extending nearly from the Solway to the Frith of Forth, was erected, either with the view of checking their further progress westward, or else by mutual consent of the two nations, as a mere line of demarcation between their respective dominions. This wall cannot have an earlier date, for it runs through the middle of the country originally occupied by the Gadeni, and could not of course have been constructed as a boundary by them; nor ...

— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin

... age of thirty he became a full-fledged dispenser and was in a position to manage the business of his father, but the latter had long ago retired and moved to the village of Letschin. The Fontane home was later broken up by the mutual agreement of the parents to dissolve their unhappy union. The father went first to Eberswalde and then to Schiffmuehle, where he died in 1867; the mother returned to Neu-Ruppin and died there ...

— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... Evolution and Disease, by J. Bland Sutton, to whom and to our mutual friend Dr. D. Thurston I am indebted for information on ...

— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... that it is this mutual good understanding, and comparing of notes between the author and the persons he describes; his infinite circumspection, his exact process of ratiocination and calculation, which gives such an appearance of coldness and formality to most of his ...

— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

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