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Cult vs Commune - What's the difference?

cult | commune |

As nouns the difference between cult and commune

is that cult is a group of people with a religious, philosophical or cultural identity sometimes viewed as a sect, often existing on the margins of society or exploitative towards its members while commune is a small community, often rural, whose members share in the ownership of property, and in the division of labour; the members of such a community.

As an adjective cult

is of, or relating to a cult.

As a verb commune is

to converse together with sympathy and confidence; to interchange sentiments or feelings; to take counsel.

cult

English

(wikipedia cult)

Noun

(en noun)
  • A group of people with a religious, philosophical or cultural identity sometimes viewed as a sect, often existing on the margins of society or exploitative towards its members.
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  • Devotion to a saint.
  • (lb) A group of people having an obsession with or intense admiration for a particular activity, idea, person or thing.

    • Derived terms

    * cargo cult * cultic * cultist

    See also

    * sect

    Adjective

    (-)
  • Of, or relating to a cult.
  • Enjoyed by a small, loyal group.
    • a cult horror movie

    Usage notes

    The term has a positive connotation for groups of art, music, writing, fiction, and fashion devotees, but a negative connotation for new religious, extreme political, questionable therapeutic, and pyramidal business groups.

    Anagrams

    * (l) ----

    commune

    English

    Etymology 1

    From (etyl) commune, in turn deriving from Latin.

    Noun

    (wikipedia commune) (en noun)
  • A small community, often rural, whose members share in the ownership of property, and in the division of labour; the members of such a community.
  • A local political division in many European countries.
  • (obsolete) The commonalty; the common people.
    • (Chaucer)
  • (obsolete) communion; sympathetic intercourse or conversation between friends
  • * Tennyson
    • For days of happy commune dead.

    Etymology 2

    From (etyl) .

    Verb

    (commun)
  • To converse together with sympathy and confidence; to interchange sentiments or feelings; to take counsel.
  • * Shakespeare
    • I would commune with you of such things / That want no ear but yours.
  • To communicate (with) spiritually; to be together (with); to contemplate or absorb.
    • He spent a week in the backcountry, communing with nature.
  • To receive the communion.
  • * Bishop Burnet
    • To commune under both kinds.
    English heteronyms ----