Noun

(countable) A group, collection, category or set sharing characteristics or attributes.

* {{quote-news, year=2011, date=October 1, author=Saj Chowdhury, work=BBC Sport

, title= Wolverhampton 1-2 Newcastle , passage=The Magpies are unbeaten and enjoying their best run since 1994, although few would have thought the class of 2011 would come close to emulating their ancestors.}}

(countable) A social grouping, based on job, wealth, etc. In Britain, society is commonly split into three main classes; upper class, middle class and working class.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-28, author=(Joris Luyendijk)

, volume=189, issue=3, page=21, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Our banks are out of control , passage=Seeing the British establishment struggle with the financial sector is like watching an alcoholic […].  Until 2008 there was denial over what finance had become. […]  But the scandals kept coming, and so we entered stage three – what therapists call "bargaining". A broad section of the political class now recognises the need for change but remains unable to see the necessity of a fundamental overhaul. Instead it offers fixes and patches.}}

(uncountable) The division of society into classes.

(uncountable) Admirable behavior; elegance.

(countable, and, uncountable) A group of students in a regularly scheduled meeting with a teacher.

A series of classes covering a single subject.

(countable) A group of students who commenced or completed their education during a particular year. A school class.

(countable) A category of seats in an airplane, train or other means of mass transportation.

(biology, taxonomy, countable) A rank in the classification of organisms, below phylum and above order; a taxon of that rank.

Best of its kind.

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(mathematics) A collection of sets definable by a shared property.

(military) A group of people subject to be conscripted in the same military draft, or more narrowly those persons actually conscripted in a particular draft.

(programming, object-oriented) A set of objects having the same behavior (but typically differing in state), or a template defining such a set.

One of the sections into which a Methodist church or congregation is divided, supervised by a class leader .

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.