READING a.
Addicted to reading; as, a reading community. Reading book, a book for teaching reading; a reader. -- Reading desk, a desk to support a book while reading; esp., a desk used while reading the service in a church. -- Reading glass, a large lens with more or less magnifying power, attached to a handle, and used in read…
SECTION n.
A distinct part of a country or people, community, class, or the like; a part of a territory separated by geographical lines, or of a people considered as distinct. The extreme section of one class consists of bigoted dotards, the extreme section of the other consists of shallow and reckless empirics. Macaulay.…
SELF-GOVERNMENT n.
Hence, government of a community, state, or nation by the joint action of the mass of people constituting such a civil body; also, the state of being so governed; democratic government; democracy. It is to self-government, the great principle of popular representation and administration, -- the system that lets in all…
SOCIAL a.
which are involved in man's existence and his well- being as a member of an organized community; sociology. It concerns itself with questions of the public health, education, labor, punishment of crime, reformation of criminals, and the like. -- Social whale (Zoöl.), the blackfish. -- The social evil, prostitution.…
SOLIDARITY n.
An entire union or consolidation of interests and responsibilities; fellowship; community. Solidarity [a word which we owe to the French Communists], signifies a fellowship in gain and loss, in honor and dishonor, in victory and defeat, a being, so to speak, all in the same boat. Trench. The solidarity . . . of Breton…
STATE n.
Any body of men united by profession, or constituting a community of a particular character; as, the civil and ecclesiastical states, or the lords spiritual and temporal and the commons, in Great Britain. Cf. Estate, n., 6.