Group (gr&oomac;p), n. [F groupe, It. gruppo, groppo, cluster, bunch, packet, group; of G. origin: cf. G. kropf craw, crop, tumor, bunch. See Crop, n.] 1. A cluster, crowd, or throng; an assemblage, either of persons or things, collected without any regular form or arrangement; as, a group of men or of trees; a group of isles.

2. An assemblage of objects in a certain order or relation, or having some resemblance or common characteristic; as, groups of strata.

3. (Biol.) A variously limited assemblage of animals or plants, having some resemblance, or common characteristics in form or structure. The term has different uses, and may be made to include certain species of a genus, or a whole genus, or certain genera, or even several orders.

4. (Mus.) 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.

Group, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Grouped (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Grouping.] [Cf. F. grouper. See Group, n.] To form a group of; to arrange or combine in a group or in groups, often with reference to mutual relation and the best effect; to form an assemblage of.

The difficulty lies in drawing and disposing, or, as the painters term it, in grouping such a multitude of different objects.

• A number of things or persons being in some relation to each other.
       There is a group of houses behind the hill.
       A group of people gathered in front of the Parliament to demonstrate against the Prime Minister's proposals.
       Did you see the new jazz group?
       He left town to join a Communist group
  
• (grouptheory) A set G together with a binary operation * such that * is associative for elements of G; there is an identity element in G; every element of G has an inverse in G under the operation; and for all elements a and b in G, a * b is in G.
  
• 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) In the Unix operating system, a number of users with same rights with respect to accession, modification, and execution of files, computers and peripherals.
  
• To put together to form a group.