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colonies

[kol-uh-nee]

noun, plural -nies.

a group of people who leave their native country to form in a new land a settlement subject to, or connected with, the parent nation.

the country or district settled or colonized: Many Western nations are former European colonies.

any people or territory separated from but subject to a ruling power.

the Colonies, those British colonies that formed the original 13 states of the United States: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

a number of people coming from the same country, or speaking the same language, residing in a foreign country or city, or a particular section of it; enclave: the Polish colony in Israel; the American colony in Paris.

EXPAND

any group of individuals having similar interests, occupations, etc., usually living in a particular locality; community: a colony of artists.

the district, quarter, or dwellings inhabited by any such number or group: The Greek island is now an artists' colony.

an aggregation of bacteria growing together as the descendants of a single cell.

Ecology. a group of organisms of the same kind living or growing in close association.

COLLAPSE

Origin:
1350–1400; Middle English colonie (< Middle French ) < Latin colōnia, equivalent to colōn(us) colonus + -ia -y³

Related forms

sem·i·col·o·ny, noun, plural -nies.

sub·col·o·ny, noun, plural -nies.

Synonyms
6. body, band.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To colonies

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Colonies is always a great word to know.

So is interrobang. Does it mean:

a fool or simpleton; ninny.

a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.

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Example Sentences

From the earliest period down to the present time, colonies have been formed from a multiplicity of motives.

British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies.

Britain's immigrants used to come from its former colonies.

EXPAND

From the earliest period down to the present time, colonies have been formed from a multiplicity of motives.

British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies.

Britain's immigrants used to come from its former colonies.

Unlike bee colonies, ant colonies are often ruled by more than one queen.

So for him, moving the colonies is probably not the problem.

AdŽlie penguins and leopard seal colonies to your heart's content.

In the process of swarming the original single colony reproduces to two and sometimes more colonies.

But whole colonies of fire ants can float downstream for weeks at a time when flushed from their underground nests.

One obvious way in which the thirteen colonies were special was geographical.

Such markers seldom are seen in rodents kept in rodent colonies.

It may not merely be individual colonies that are super-organisms.

They watch over the behavior of the colonies in their sect and sometimes reprimand bad behavior.

Colonies of fire ants numbering in the thousands can morph into sturdy, waterproof rafts that can remain afloat for months.

One of the world's largest colonies of puffins lives here.

Plant spreads by suckers to form colonies add to my plant list.

Colonies of a bizarre microbial goo have been found practicing agriculture at a scale tinier than any seen before.

When they take major damage or other major crises happen, they turn into polyp colonies.

Ladybugs lay hundreds of eggs in the colonies of aphids and other plant-eating pests.

Leaf-cutter ant species depend on actively managed fungus farming to feed their teaming colonies.

Part of what happens during this time is that colonies of soil-dwelling organisms become established and begin to flourish.

The alarm was first sounded late last year, when entire colonies started disappearing, practically overnight.

The aphid colonies grow inside galls, abnormal outgrowths on plants.

They died in great numbers in the early years of the colonies.

Of course many bacteria form large interlinked structures such as biofilms and colonies.

Grows vigorously in rich, loose soil, forming large colonies.

Most of these species live in colonies of a few thousand individuals, with tiny garden plots.

China is not looking for new colonies and it has no ideology to export.

Similar elements make urban parakeet colonies compulsive viewing for city folk.

Colonies can produce such an underwater din that it deafens anyone trying to scan the seas with sonar.

We have seen drones flying all winter long in the strong colonies.

Water samples from the old mine yielded colonies of bacteria and fungi.

Most of the islands' penguin colonies are dwindling.

Carpenter ants live in large colonies that revolve around a queen that lays all of the fertilized eggs.

The tiny fossils resemble filamentous colonies of cells, but have evaded positive identification.

The people in these colonies changed the land in many ways.

Even one such event is statistically unlikely outside of rapidly reproducing bacterial colonies.

The giant colonies can have thousands of individual trunks, but share the same network of roots.

Lepers were usually shunned and sequestered in leper colonies.

Iron as your example and other elements already in space could be mined to build ships, moon colonies or whatever.

Lagan figured that bacterial colonies could do the same for slices of ham.

They conducted their experiment on laboratory colonies with two mother queens.

The researchers developed cultures from samples of healthy coral and colonies afflicted with whitepox.

Last year, his students programmed bacteria to form polka-dotted colonies.

They live in colonies on rocky beaches, but will spend weeks at a time in the water hunting.

Most of those in research colonies are continuously housed in social groups in indoor-outdoor enclosures.

Researchers are meeting some mite-control success by increasing the ventilation of managed bee colonies.

As far as the moon goes, permanent colonies there have the same problem.

As a result, some of the colonies produced no offspring that year.

Mars and asteroids, even with the small hope of starting independent colonies.

When the researchers pitted members from these distinct colonies against the supercolony ants, the rivals fought in mortal combat.

Gentoo penguins are a favored menu item of the leopard seals, sea lions, and orcas that patrol the waters around their colonies.

The colonies forming that empire may be divided into.

He and his team also use thermal infrared imaging to count the number of bats in huge colonies and to study their behavior.

Taylor said the dead butterflies were from the easternmost colonies of overwintering butterflies.

New experiments show how ant colonies don't fall prey to irrational choices as humans sometimes do.

More than a quarter of the country's bee colonies have been lost, and no one can say what is to blame.

Thailand is considering using several former leper colonies to quarantine large groups.

Army ant colonies succeed at making tens of thousands such kills each day.

But some researchers think they can use these slimy colonies of.

When the researchers compared their learned flies to colonies selectively bred to live long lives, they found even greater.

Finally the bug sprang back to life and began producing fresh colonies of purple brown bacteria.

Off-world colonies advertise a greater life via flying billboards.

Under the right inspiration, he might have been an intrepid explorer or a founder of thriving colonies.

Research shows that huge colonies of marauding army ants use simple movement rules to minimize congestion along forest trails.

Little had been known about the three-inch-long rodents, which spend their entire lives in underground colonies.

So far he has noticed that hives are smaller this year and some colonies still collapsing.

Undisturbed colonies have thousands of residents and extend for miles in all directions.

There is a small reference in the movie about how in the colonies they built a mill and it sank into the caves.

In fact, small colonies may sometimes rely on a single hyperactive overachiever.

Probably, he said, it was because people thought nothing good could come out of the colonies.

Pants gained wide acceptance in other utopian colonies in the following decade.

However some sensibilities of former colonies make it more complicated.

The colonies did, indeed, have the synthetic genomes.

It is also difficult for me to understand why people from ex colonies go to live with their former colonial masters.

Wilson thinks eusociality evolved as a group-level adaptation for out-competing other insect colonies for food:.

They live in colonies on rocky beaches, but will spend weeks at a.

Depending on the species, it only takes a few organisms to create huge colonies outside of the lab.

Cruise to pristine islands and walk among colonies of animals and birds unfazed by your presence.

Adventures took place there, colonies were built and the moon was a place of fantasy.

Comparisons of genetic data from the different ants suggest that single-queen colonies evolved first, they note.

Look for their large nesting colonies on cliffs as well as on buildings and under bridges.

The population of some colonies exceeds half a million.

But they also need the ice to shrink in the summer so they can access their breeding colonies on land.

They are also home to nesting colonies of sea birds.

These polyps clump together, and over a long time they create large, connected colonies called reefs.

Coral reefs form when colonies of tropical marine plants and animals.

When the gribbles come back to older burrows, they graze on these colonies of microorganisms.

The fossils suggest that the dinosaur-era flying reptiles lived in colonies and raised their young, experts say.

The team found that shimmering was triggered in giant honeybee colonies when hornets flew too close to the nests.

Coral reefs form when colonies of tropical marine plants.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

Colonies (ˈkɒlənɪz)

—*pl n*
1.	(Brit) the subject territories formerly in the British Empire
2.	(US) history the 13 states forming the original United States of America when they declared their independence (1776). These were Connecticut, North and South Carolina, Delaware, Georgia, New Hampshire, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and New Jersey

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

colony

late 14c., "ancient Roman settlement outside Italy," from L. colonia "settled land, farm, landed estate," from colonus "husbandman, tenant farmer, settler in new land," from colere "to inhabit, cultivate, frequent, practice, tend, guard, respect," from PIE base *kwel- "move around" (source of L. -cola

EXPAND

"inhabitant;" see cycle). Also used by the Romans to translate Gk. apoikia "people from home." Modern application dates from 1540s.

COLLAPSE

American Heritage

Medical Dictionary

colony col·o·ny (kŏl'ə-nē)
n.
A discrete group of organisms, such as a group of cells growing on a solid nutrient surface.

American Heritage

Science Dictionary

colony

(kŏl'ə-nē) Pronunciation Key
A group of the same kind of animals, plants, or one-celled organisms living or growing together. Organisms live in colonies for their mutual benefit, and especially their protection. Multicellular organisms may have evolved out of colonies of unicellular organisms.

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Matching Quote

"America owes most of its social prejudices to the exaggerated religious opinions of the different sects which were so instrumental in establishing the colonies."

-James Fenimore Cooper

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