college

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. An institution of higher learning that grants the bachelor's degree in liberal arts or science or both.
2. n. An undergraduate division or school of a university offering courses and granting degrees in a particular field.
3. n. A school, sometimes but not always a university, offering special instruction in professional or technical subjects.
4. n. The students, faculty, and administration of such a school or institution.
5. n. The building or buildings occupied by such a school or institution.
6. n. Chiefly British A self-governing society of scholars for study or instruction, incorporated within a university.
7. n. An institution in France for secondary education that is not supported by the state.
8. n. A body of persons having a common purpose or shared duties: a college of surgeons.
9. n. An electoral college.
10. n. A body of clerics living together on an endowment.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. An organized association of men, invested with certain common powers and rights, performing certain related duties, or engaged in some common employment or pursuit; a body of colleagues; a guild; a corporation; a community: as, an ancient Roman college of priests; the college of cardinals; the Heralds' College in England; a college of physicians or surgeons.
2. n. An endowed and incorporated community or association of students within a university. See university. A college corporation in the English universities consists of a master, fellows, and scholars.
3. n. The institution or house founded for the accommodation of such an association. Such houses began to be established about a. d. 1200, as charitable foundations for affording food and lodging to poor students, and did not at first undertake to subject them to any regular discipline or to order their studies. But schools were early attached to them, and the entire instruction of most of the universities was ultimately given in the colleges.
4. n. In Scotland, the United States, and Canada, an incorporated and endowed institution of learning of the highest grade. In the United States college is the generic name for all such institutions (sometimes given even to professional schools), university being properly limited to colleges which in size, organization (especially in division into distinct schools and faculties), methods of instruction, and diversity of subjects taught approach most nearly to the institutions so named in Europe.
5. n. A school or an academy of a high grade or of high pretensions.
6. n. An edifice occupied by a college.
7. n. In France, an institution for secondary education, controlled by the municipality, which pays for the instruction given there, and differing from the lyceum in that the latter is supported and directed by the state. The curriculum is nearly the same in both, the college being usually modeled on the lyceum.
8. n. A collection or assembly; a company.
9. n. A debtors' prison.
10. n. The whole body of bishops of the historical church, regarded as continuing and possessing in their corporate capacity the authority of the original assembly of apostles.
11. n. A church connected with a college.

Wiktionary

1. n. An institution of further education at an intermediate level (in the UK, typically teaching those aged 16 to 19); sixth form.
2. n. An institution for adult education at a basic or intermediate level (teaching those of any age).
3. n. UK, in the names of private schools A secondary school.
4. n. A non-specialized, semi-autonomous division of a university, with its own faculty, departments, library, etc.
5. n. Australia A residential hall associated with a university, which may be independent or have its own tutors but is not involved in teaching.
6. n. loosely Any institution of higher education.
7. n. US An institution of higher education teaching undergraduates and/or graduates. Nearly synonymous with university, with less emphasis on research and may, or may not, have graduate or doctoral programs.
8. n. US, New Zealand A specialized division of a university.
9. n. New Zealand A high school or secondary school.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A collection, body, or society of persons engaged in common pursuits, or having common duties and interests, and sometimes, by charter, peculiar rights and privileges.
2. n. A society of scholars or friends of learning, incorporated for study or instruction, esp. in the higher branches of knowledge.
3. n. A building, or number of buildings, used by a college.
4. n. rare Fig.: A community.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the body of faculty and students of a college
2. n. an institution of higher education created to educate and grant degrees; often a part of a university
3. n. a complex of buildings in which an institution of higher education is housed