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fraternity

[fruh-tur-ni-tee]

noun, plural -ties.

a local or national organization of male students, primarily for social purposes, usually with secret initiation and rites and a name composed of two or three Greek letters.

a group of persons associated by or as if by ties of brotherhood.

any group or class of persons having common purposes, interests, etc.: the medical fraternity.

an organization of laymen for religious or charitable purposes; sodality.

the quality of being brotherly; brotherhood: liberty, equality, and fraternity.

EXPAND

the relation of a brother or between brothers.

COLLAPSE

Origin:
1300–50; Middle English fraternite < Latin frāternitās. See fraternal, -ity

Related forms

in·ter·fra·ter·ni·ty, adjective

non·fra·ter·ni·ty, noun, plural -ties.

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

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Fraternity is always a great word to know.

So is doohickey. Does it mean:

a gadget; dingus; thingumbob.

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

Fraternity dominance of the social scene of many campuses heightens risks for young women.

When a college's social reputation threatens to overwhelm its academic stature, the fraternity house stands.

Lets see how the alarm fraternity deal with the projected cold climate that now appears to be arriving.

EXPAND

Fraternity dominance of the social scene of many campuses heightens risks for young women.

When a college's social reputation threatens to overwhelm its academic stature, the fraternity house stands.

Lets see how the alarm fraternity deal with the projected cold climate that now appears to be arriving.

It reminded me of a fraternity hazing with the older monks giving the younger ones grief.

Stanford experiment reminds me fraternity entrance tests.

In short, the cryptocracking fraternity had been thrown open to the rabble.

Some studies show that fraternity members drink more and behave more lewdly toward women.

Most of the time, when a university penalizes a campus group for hazing, it's a fraternity.

In fact, they have remained surprisingly conspicuous, becoming a kind of secular scripture for the aid fraternity.

Binge drinking and alcohol-related deaths have inspired a movement to outlaw beer and booze in fraternity houses.

Think only of the initiation into fraternity and sorority houses.

The aid fraternity is fascinated and appalled by these two sorry affairs.

Prospective fraternity and sorority members are still kicked, paddled and punched.

There are rules about membership, equality, fairness fraternity etc.

Hazing and partying have been central to college fraternity life for a long time.

Ellis portrays the select fraternity that founded our nation.

Or someone in the reviewer's intellectual fraternity.

There are two interesting traits that her fraternity share.

With little exception, undergraduate sorority and fraternity members are adolescents:.

Hoisting flagons with the élite cable-laying fraternity at a waterfront establishment.

On the night when a college boy is made to lie in a coffin as part of a fraternity initiation, his father dies.

The fraternity and sorority members danced and did their strutt also.

The university suspended his fraternity as it looked into reports that fraternity brothers had beaten him.

But fraternity is at work here, too, even if one wants to argue in general that people ought to be allowed to do what they like.

University officials say the fraternity may face sanctions.

Having once been part of the baseball fraternity and still knowing people in the game eventually made that possible.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

fraternity (frəˈtɜːnɪtɪ)

—n , pl -ties
1.	Gender-neutral form: community a body of people united in interests, aims, etc: the teaching fraternity
2.	brotherhood
3.	(US), (Canadian) a secret society joined by male students, usually functioning as a social club

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

Word Origin & History

fraternity

early 14c., "body of men associated by common interest," from O.Fr. fraternité, from L. fraternitatem (nom. fraternitas), from fraternus "brotherly," from frater "brother," from PIE *bhrater (see brother). College Greek-letter organization sense is from 1777, first

EXPAND

in reference to Phi Beta Kappa; shortened form frat first recorded 1895.

COLLAPSE

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Matching Quote

"We begin with friendships, and all our youth is a reconnoitering and recruiting of the holy fraternity they shall combine for the salvation of men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not resolve; and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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