nation
/ˈneɪʃən/ noun A2- A historically constituted, stable community of people, formed based on a common economic life, ethnicity, language, religion, and/or territory, and manifested in a common culture. · The Roma are a nation without a country.· pre-Columbian nations
- A community united by some trait (especially an interest) but not historically constituted. · Near-synonym: tribe· the Dallas Cowboys nation
- A sovereign state; (loosely, metonymic, proscribed) a country. · Though legally single nations, many states comprise several distinct cultural or ethnic groups.
- An association of students based on the birthplace or ethnicity of its members. · Once widespread across Europe in medieval times, nations are now largely restricted to the ancient universities of Sweden and Finland.
- In North America, an Indigenous people with federal and/or state recognition as such and (often also) their federally recognized territory. · The Choctaw Nation is the third-largest federally recognized tribe in the United States and the second-largest Indian reservation in area.· The term Navajo Nation refers both to the people and to their territory.
Plural nations
From the library
“These are the ideas that render your nation superior to any other,” returned Monte Cristo.
Your horses got as far as Ranelagh, when they darted forward like mad things, and galloped away at so fearful a rate, that there seemed no other prospect for myself and my poor Edward but that of being dashed to pieces against the first object that impeded their progress, when a strange-looking man,—an Arab, a negro, or a Nubian, at least a black of some nation or other—at a signal from the count, whose domestic he is, suddenly seized and stopped the infuriated animals, even at the risk of being trampled to death himself; and certainly he must have had a most wonderful escape.
The Englishman received his thanks with the phlegm peculiar to his nation; and Morrel, overwhelming him with grateful blessings, conducted him to the staircase.
“Upon my word,” said Albert, “I deserve no credit for what I could not help, namely, a determination to take everything as I found it, and to let those bandits see, that although men get into troublesome scrapes all over the world, there is no nation but the French that can smile even in the face of grim Death himself.
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