The definition of a cohort is a group of people who have come together in support of a common cause, or a group of people who share a common characteristic.noun
A band of warriors fighting for the same cause are an example of a group of cohorts.YourDictionary definition and usage example. Copyright © 2013 by LoveToKnow Corp.
- an ancient Roman military unit of 300-600 men, constituting one tenth of a legion
- a band of soldiers
- any group or band
- an associate, colleague, or supporter: one of the mayor's cohorts
- a conspirator or accomplice
- a subgroup sharing a common factor in a statistical survey, as age or income level
Origin: ME < L cohors, enclosure, enclosed company, hence, retinue, crowd < co-, co- + IE *ĝhṛtis, a gathering < base *ĝher-, to grasp, enclose > yard
Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
- A group or band of people.
- A companion or associate.
- A generational group as defined in demographics, statistics, or market research: “The cohort of people aged 30 to 39 . . . were more conservative” (American Demographics).
- a. One of the 10 divisions of a Roman legion, consisting of 300 to 600 men.b. A group of soldiers.
Origin: Middle English, from Old French cohorte, from Latin cohors, cohort-; see gher-1 in Indo-European roots.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.
cohort - Medical Definition