Noun

(en noun)

A number of things or persons being in some relation to one another.

* , chapter=5

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=Then everybody once more knelt, and soon the blessing was pronounced. The choir and the clergy trooped out slowly, […], down the nave to the western door. […] At a seemingly immense distance the surpliced group stopped to say the last prayer.}}

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-19, author=(Peter Wilby)

, volume=189, issue=6, page=30, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Finland spreads word on schools , passage=Imagine a country where children do nothing but play until they start compulsory schooling at age seven. Then, without exception, they attend comprehensives until the age of 16. Charging school fees is illegal, and so is sorting pupils into ability groups by streaming or setting.}}

(group theory) A set with an associative binary operation, under which there exists an identity element, and such that each element has an inverse.

(geometry, archaic) An effective divisor on a curve.

A (usually small) group of people who perform music together.

(astronomy) A small number (up to about fifty) of galaxies that are near each other.

(chemistry) A column in the periodic table of chemical elements.

(chemistry) A functional entity consisting of certain atoms whose presence provides a certain property to a molecule, such as the methyl group.

(sociology) A subset of a culture or of a society.

(military) An air force formation.

(geology) A collection of formations or rock strata.

(computing) A number of users with same rights with respect to accession, modification, and execution of files, computers and peripherals.

An element of an espresso machine from which hot water pours into the portafilter.

(music) A number of eighth, sixteenth, etc., notes joined at the stems; sometimes rather indefinitely applied to any ornament made up of a few short notes.

(sports) A set of teams playing each other in the same division, while at the same time not playing teams that belong to other sets in the division.

*

Noun

(en noun)

(mathematics) A regular three-dimensional object in which every cross-section is a circle; the figure described by the revolution of a circle about its diameter .

A spherical physical object; a globe or ball.

* Milton

Of celestial bodies, first the sun, / A mighty sphere , he framed.

* 2011 , Piers Sellers, The Guardian , 6 July:

So your orientation changes a little bit but it sinks in that the world is a sphere , and you're going around it, sometimes under it, sideways, or over it.

* 1635 , John Donne, "His parting form her":

Though cold and darkness longer hang somewhere, / Yet Phoebus equally lights all the Sphere .

(historical, astronomy, mythology) Any of the concentric hollow transparent globes formerly believed to rotate around the Earth, and which carried the heavenly bodies; there were originally believed to be eight, and later nine and ten; friction between them was thought to cause a harmonious sound (the music of the spheres ).

*, vol.1, p.153:

It is more simplicitie to teach our children[t]he knowledge of the starres, and the motion of the eighth spheare , before their owne.

* 1646 , (Thomas Browne), Pseudodoxia Epidemica , I.6:

They understood not the motion of the eighth sphear from West to East, and so conceived the longitude of the Stars invariable.

(mythology) An area of activity for a planet; or by extension, an area of influence for a god, hero etc.

(figuratively) The region in which something or someone is active; one's province, domain.

* 1946 , (Bertrand Russell), History of Western Philosophy , I.20:

They thought – originally on grounds derived from religion – that each thing or person had its or his proper sphere , to overstep which is ‘unjust’.

(geometry) The set of all points in three-dimensional Euclidean space (or n -dimensional space, in topology) that are a fixed distance from a fixed point .

(logic) The extension of a general conception, or the totality of the individuals or species to which it may be applied.