cohort

(kō'hôrt')
n.

1. A group or band of people.
2. A companion or associate.
3. A generational group as defined in demographics, statistics, or market research: "The cohort of people aged 30 to 39 . . . were more conservative" (American Demographics).
4. 1. One of the 10 divisions of a Roman legion, consisting of 300 to 600 men.
   2. A group of soldiers.

[Middle English, from Old French cohorte, from Latin cohors, cohort-.]

USAGE NOTE   In Caesar's Gallic War a cohort was a unit of soldiers. There were 6 centuries (100 men) to a cohort, 10 cohorts to a legion (therefore 6,000 men). A century, then, would correspond to a company, a cohort to a battalion, and a legion to a regiment. Because of the word's history, some critics insist that cohort should be used only to refer to a group of people and never to an individual. In recent years, however, the use of cohort to refer to an individual rather than a group has become very common and is now in fact the dominant usage. Seventy-one percent of the Usage Panel accepts the sentence The cashiered dictator and his cohorts have all written their memoirs, while only 43 percent accepts The gangster walked into the room surrounded by his cohort. • Perhaps because of its original military meaning and paramilitary associations, cohort usually has a somewhat negative connotation, and therefore critics of the President rather than his supporters might use a phrase like the President and his cohorts.

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A cohort (cohors) of the Roman army was an infantry unit equivalent to one-tenth of a legion, and typically consisted of about 500 soldiers. In the plural it has often been used as a literary word for 'army', as in Byron's reference to Sennacherib (1815): And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold. As well as a technical meaning in demography, the word has in the 20th century developed a meaning (originally American English) 'an assistant, colleague, accomplice', probably influenced by the coincidence of the first element with the prefix co-:

Mr Stratton consented...to partake together with his cohort of a sandwich and a glass of milk—A. Cross, 1967

The impending trial of Bobby Seale, chairman of the Black Panther movement, and his eight cohorts in New Haven—Sunday Times, 1970

Brock and Emma had one wall, Bob, Johnny and their cohorts the other wall and centre aisle—John Le Carré, 1979.

The incongruity of this use is masked by its frequent appearance in the plural, and the singular even appears to be a kind of back-formation. Language becomes vulnerable when the specific historical significance of words is so easily forgotten.

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noun

1. One who is united in a relationship with another: affiliate, ally, associate, colleague, confederate, copartner, fellow, partner. See connect.
2. One who supports and adheres to another: adherent, disciple, follower, henchman, minion, partisan, satellite, supporter. See over/under, precede/follow.

n

Definition: partner in activity
Antonyms: enemy, opponent

n.a group of people banded together or treated as a group.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

A group of people who experience a significant event, such as birth or leaving school, during the same period of time, usually a year but also in five-year groups; an example would be the ‘baby boomers’ or ‘ageing hippies’—the choice of name varies according to who is describing this particular cohort! More specifically, all children born in the UK in 1980 would form the birth cohort of 1980. Cohort analysis traces the subsequent vital history of cohorts; the most common type of cohort analysis uses age-groups, also known as birth cohorts, often in five- or ten-year age bands, to study mortality rates. The major problem of cohort analysis is to distinguish between the effects on the cohort of getting older (age effects), of common experiences like National Health orange juice (cohort effects), and particular historical events, like a war (period effects).

Cohort fertility is the total of live births born to a particular birth or marriage group.

cohort, in the Roman army, the tenth part of a legion, nominally 600 men.

[De]

A unit of the Roman army. A legionary cohort usually consisted of 480 men, although the First Cohort was of double strength. Auxiliary cohorts were units 500 or 1000 strong which were either wholly infantry (cohors peditata) or consisted of both infantry and some mounted troops (cohors equitata).

Group of individuals possessing a common characteristic, such as being born in the same year or entering school on the same date.

IN BRIEF: Companion or accomplice.

Your cohort in that adventure is as much a hero as you are.

LearnThatWord.com is a free vocabulary and spelling program where you only pay for results!

In epidemiology a group of individuals who share a characteristic acquired at the same time. The term usually refers to a birth cohort, which contains animals born in a specified time period.

• c. studies — a prospective or follow-up, analytical, epidemiological study. The investigation identifies a group of animals which have the hypothesized cause and which are free of the disease of interest, and a comparison group of animals which are free of the hypothesized cause. Both groups, the cohorts, are followed over time to determine the incidence rates of the disease in question in each of the two groups.

n

In statistics, a collection or sampling of individuals who share a common characteristic, such as the same age or sex.

For a list of words related to cohort, see:

• Tools and Techniques - cohort: group having one demographic factor in common
• Affectionate Reference
• Intrigues, Plots, and Corruption - cohort: companion or colleague, esp. in some scheme

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See words rhyming with "cohort."

  See crossword solutions for the clue Cohort.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - gruppe, generation, følgesvend, kohorte

Nederlands (Dutch)
schare, cohorte, bende, kameraad/collega

Français (French)
n. - cohorte, foule

Deutsch (German)
n. - Schar, Kohorte, Helfer

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (ιστ., φυτολ.) κοόρτις, ομάδα πολεμιστών, μπουλούκι

Italiano (Italian)
schiera

Português (Portuguese)
n. - coorte (m), bando (m)

Русский (Russian)
когорта, подручный

Español (Spanish)
n. - cohorte

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - kohort (rom. antik.), skara, anhängare (am.)

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
步兵大队, 一群, 军队

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 步兵大隊, 一群, 軍隊

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 보병대, 동료, 동계 인자를 공유하는 집단

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 歩兵隊, 集団, 仲間

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) فرقه جنود رومانيه, مجموعه متحدة‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮קבוצה, פלוגה, חבר, קוהורטה‬

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