common
Definitions
General English
- adjective happening often, or found everywhere and so not unusual
General Science
- adjective used or done by several people
Agriculture
- adjective belonging to several different people or to everyone
- noun an area of land to which the public has access for walking
Electronics
- Shared by two or more entities, such as circuits, devices, components, systems, users, and so on. As seen, for instance, in a common-source connection.
- grounded. As seen, for instance, in a common ground.
Law
- adjective which happens very often
Medical
- adjective frequently occurring
Real Estate
- adjective belonging to or shared by two or more people
Origin & History of “common”
Common comes ultimately from an Indo-European base *moi-, *mei-, signifying ‘change, exchange’, which also produced English immune, mutate, mutual, and remunerate. A derivative of this base, *moin-, *mein- seems to have joined up with the Indo-European collective *kom- to produce *komoin-, *komein- ‘shared by all’. In Germanic this became *gamainiz, source of English mean ‘despicable’, while in Latin it gave commūnis, source, via Old French comun, of English common. both the Latin and French forms have given English a number of derivatives: from the former we have community (14th c.) (Latin commūnitātis), communion (14th c.) (Latin commūniō), and communicate (16th c.) (Latin commūnicāre), while the latter has yielded commune (13th c.) (Old French comuner) and communism (19th c.) (French communisme, coined around 1840).
