COMMUNION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does Communion mean? 

• COMMUNION (noun)
  The noun COMMUNION has 3 senses:

1. the act of participating in the celebration of the Eucharist

2. sharing thoughts and feelings

3. (Christianity) a group of Christians with a common religious faith who practice the same rites

  Familiarity information: COMMUNION used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• COMMUNION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The act of participating in the celebration of the Eucharist

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

Communion; Holy Communion; manduction; sacramental manduction

Context example:

the governor took Communion with the rest of the congregation

Hypernyms ("Communion" is a kind of...):

ritual (the prescribed procedure for conducting religious ceremonies)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "Communion"):

intercommunion (participation in Holy Communion by members of more than one church (eg Catholic and Orthodox))

Holonyms ("Communion" is a part of...):

Eucharist; Eucharistic liturgy; Holy Eucharist; Holy Sacrament; Liturgy; Lord's Supper; sacrament of the Eucharist (a Christian sacrament commemorating the Last Supper by consecrating bread and wine)

Derivation:

commune (receive Communion, in the Catholic church)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Sharing thoughts and feelings

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

communion; sharing

Hypernyms ("communion" is a kind of...):

intercourse; social intercourse (communication between individuals)

Derivation:

commune (communicate intimately with; be in a state of heightened, intimate receptivity)

Sense 3

Meaning:

(Christianity) a group of Christians with a common religious faith who practice the same rites

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("communion" is a kind of...):

denomination (a group of religious congregations having its own organization and a distinctive faith)

Domain category:

Christian religion; Christianity (a monotheistic system of beliefs and practices based on the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus as embodied in the New Testament and emphasizing the role of Jesus as savior)

 Context examples 

He seemed in communion with the genius of the haunt: with his eye he bade farewell to something.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It involves interbrain communion that goes beyond language itself and may constitute a key factor in interpersonal relations and the understanding of language.

(Our Brains Synchronize during A Conversation, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor, and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Yet here, day after day for an hour after nones, and for an hour before vespers, he found himself in close communion with three maidens, all young, all fair, and all therefore doubly dangerous from the monkish standpoint.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And often, such was the communion in which they lived, the strength of Buck’s gaze would draw John Thornton’s head around, and he would return the gaze, without speech, his heart shining out of his eyes as Buck’s heart shone out.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

The stiff-rim and the square-cut vanished, being replaced by milder garments; the toughness went out of the face, the hardness out of the eyes; and, the face, chastened and refined, was irradiated from an inner life of communion with beauty and knowledge.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Our place was taken at the communion rails.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Yet he enjoys one comfort, the offspring of solitude and delirium; he believes that when in dreams he holds converse with his friends and derives from that communion consolation for his miseries or excitements to his vengeance, that they are not the creations of his fancy, but the beings themselves who visit him from the regions of a remote world.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic and high.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)