state

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A condition or mode of being, as with regard to circumstances: a state of confusion.
2. n. A condition of being in a stage or form, as of structure, growth, or development: the fetal state.
3. n. A mental or emotional condition: in a manic state.
4. n. Informal A condition of excitement or distress.
5. n. Physics The condition of a physical system with regard to phase, form, composition, or structure: Ice is the solid state of water.
6. n. Social position or rank.
7. n. Ceremony; pomp: foreign leaders dining in state at the White House.
8. n. The supreme public power within a sovereign political entity.
9. n. The sphere of supreme civil power within a given polity: matters of state.
10. n. A specific mode of government: the socialist state.
11. n. A body politic, especially one constituting a nation: the states of Eastern Europe.
12. n. One of the more or less internally autonomous territorial and political units composing a federation under a sovereign government: the 48 contiguous states of the Union.
13. adj. Of or relating to a body politic or to an internally autonomous territorial or political unit constituting a federation under one government: a monarch dealing with state matters; the department that handles state security.
14. adj. Owned and operated by a state: state universities.
15. v. To set forth in words; declare.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Mode or form of existence; position; posture; situation; condition: as, the state of one's health; the state of the roads; a state of uncertainty or of excitement; the present unsatisfactory state of affaire.
2. n. Political or social position or status; station; standing in the world or the community; rank; condition; quality.
3. n. A class or order: same as estate, 9.
4. n. Style of living; mode of life; especially, the dignity and pomp befitting a person of high degree or large wealth.
5. n. Stateliness; dignity.
6. n. A person of high rank; a noble; a personage of distinction.
7. n. A seat of dignity; a dais; a chair of state, usually on a raised platform, with or without a canopy; also, this canopy itself.
8. n. The crisis, or culminating point, as of a disease; that point in the growth or course of a thing at which decline begins.
9. n. Continuance of existence; stability.
10. n. Estate; income; possession.
11. n. The whole people of one body politic; the commonwealth: usually with the definite article; in a particular sense, a civil and self-governing community; a commonwealth.
12. n. The power wielded by the government of a country; the civil power, often as contrasted with the ecclesiastical: as, the union of church and state.
13. n. One of the commonwealths or bodies politic which together make up a federal republic, which stand in certain specified relations with the central or national government, and as regards internal affairs are more or less independent. In this sense the word state is used chiefly with reference to the several States (generally cap.) of the American Union, the United States of America. The relations between the individual states and the national or central government of Mexico, Brazil, and various other republics of the American continent are formed more or less closely on the model of the United States. Current designations or epithets of the States of the American Union are the following: Badger State, Wisconsin; Bay State, Massachusetts; Bayou State, Mississippi; Bear State, Arkansas, California, Kentucky; Big-bend State, Tennessee; Blue-hen State, Delaware: Blue-law State, Connecticut; Buckeye State, Ohio; Bullion State, Missouri; Centennial State, Colorado; Corn-cracker State, Kentucky; Cracker State, Georgia; Creole State, Louisiana; Dark and Bloody Ground, Kentucky; Diamond State, Delaware; Empire State, New York; Empire State of the South, Georgia; Excelsior State, New York; Freestone State, Connecticut; Garden State, Kansas; Golden State, California; Gopher State, Minnesota; Granite State, New Hampshire; Green Mountain State, Vermont; Gulf State, Florida; Hawkeye State, Iowa; Hoosier State, Indiana; Keystone State, Pennsylvania; Lake State, Michigan; Land of Steady Habits, Connecticut; Little Rhody, Rhode Island; Lonestar State, Texas; Lumber State, Maine; Mother of Presidents, Virginia; Mother of States, Virginia; Mudcat State, Mississippi; New England of the West, Minnesota; Old Colony, Massachusetts; Old Dominion, Virginia; Old-line State, Maryland; Old North State, North Carolina; Palmetto State, South Carolina; Pan handle State, West Virginia; Pelican State, Louisiana; Peninsula State, Florida; Pine-tree State, Maine; Prairie State, Illinois; Sage-hen State, Nevada; Silver State, Nevada; Squatter State, Kansas; Sucker State, Illinois; Turpentine State, North Carolina; Web-foot State, Oregon; Wolverine State, Michigan; Wooden Nutmeg State, Connecticut.
14. n. plural [capitalized] The legislative body in the island of Jersey. It consists of the bailiff, jurats of the royal court, constables, rectors of the parishes, and fourteen deputies. The lieutenant-governor has the veto power. Guernsey has a similar body, the Deliberative States, and a more popular assembly, the Elective States.
15. n. A statement; a document containing a statement, or showing the state or condition of something at a given time; an account (or the like) stated.
16. n. In engraving, an impression taken from an engraved plate in some particular stage of its progress, recognized by certain distinctive marks not seen on previous impressions or on any made subsequently unless coupled with fresh details. There may be seven, eight, or more states from one plate.
17. n. In botany, a form or phase of a particular plant.
18. n. The United States of America: as, he has sailed from Liverpool for the States.
19. n. Synonyms and See situation.
20. Of or pertaining to the community or body politic; public: as, state affairs; state policy; a state paper.
21. Used on or intended for occasions of great pomp or ceremony: as, a state carriage.
22. Of or pertaining to one of the commonwealths which make up a federal republic: opposed to national: as, state rights; a state prison; state legislatures.
23. A newspaper selected, by or pursuant to law, for the publication of official or legal notices.
24. A prison maintained by a State for the regular confinement of felons under sentence to imprisonment: distinguished from county and city jails, in which are confined misdemeanants, and felons awaiting trial, or awaiting execution of the death penalty, and from reformatories, etc.
25. To set; fix; settle; establish; stablish: as, to state a day: chiefly used in the past participle.
26. To settle as a possession upon; bestow or settle upon.
27. To express the particulars of; set down in detail or in gross; represent fully in words; make known specifically; explain particularly; narrate; recite: as, to state an opinion; to state the particulars of a case.
28. In law, to aver or allege. Thus, stating a case to be within the purview of a statute is simply alleging that it is; while showing it to be so consists in a disclosure of the facts which bring it within the statute.
29. Synonyms Speak, Tell, etc. (see say), specify, set forth.
30. Stately.
31. n. In biology: Figuratively, a community of colonial organisms, such as a hive of bees. A state, in which the bond of union is not organic but social, is contrasted by Haeckel with a cormus or cormidium, such as a siphonophore, in which the bond of union is organic.
32. n. An aggregation of cells which exhibits centralization, interdependence, divergent specialization, and division of labor.

Wiktionary

1. n. Any sovereign polity. A government.
2. n. A political division of a federation retaining a degree of autonomy, for example one of the fifty United States. See also Province.
3. n. A condition.
4. n. Pomp, ceremony, or dignity.
5. n. computing The stable condition of a processor during a particular clock cycle.
6. n. computing The set of all parameters relevant to a computation.
7. n. computing The values of all parameters at some point in a computation.
8. n. anthropology A society larger than a tribe. A society large enough to form a state in the sense of a government.
9. n. sciences The physical property of matter as solid, liquid, gas or plasma
10. n. mathematics an element of the range of the random variables that define a random process.
11. n. obsolete A great person, a dignitary; a lord or prince.
12. v. transitive To declare to be a fact.
13. v. transitive To make known.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The circumstances or condition of a being or thing at any given time.
2. n. Rank; condition; quality.
3. n. Condition of prosperity or grandeur; wealthy or prosperous circumstances; social importance.
4. n. Appearance of grandeur or dignity; pomp.
5. n. obsolete A chair with a canopy above it, often standing on a dais; a seat of dignity; also, the canopy itself.
6. n. obsolete Estate; possession.
7. n. obsolete A person of high rank.
8. n. Any body of men united by profession, or constituting a community of a particular character. Cf. Estate, n., 6.
9. n. The principal persons in a government.
10. n. The bodies that constitute the legislature of a country.
11. n. obsolete A form of government which is not monarchial, as a republic.
12. n. A political body, or body politic; the whole body of people who are united under one government, whatever may be the form of government; a nation.
13. n. In the United States, one of the commonwealths, or bodies politic, the people of which make up the body of the nation, and which, under the national constitution, stand in certain specified relations with the national government, and are invested, as commonwealths, with full power in their several spheres over all matters not expressly inhibited.
14. n. obsolete Highest and stationary condition, as that of maturity between growth and decline, or as that of crisis between the increase and the abating of a disease; height; acme.
15. adj. obsolete Stately.
16. adj. Belonging to the state, or body politic; public.
17. v. rare To set; to settle; to establish.
18. v. To express the particulars of; to set down in detail or in gross; to represent fully in words; to narrate; to recite
19. n. rare A statement; also, a document containing a statement.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. (chemistry) the three traditional states of matter are solids (fixed shape and volume) and liquids (fixed volume and shaped by the container) and gases (filling the container)
2. n. a state of depression or agitation
3. n. the way something is with respect to its main attributes
4. v. express in words
5. n. the territory occupied by a nation
6. v. indicate through a symbol, formula, etc.
7. n. the territory occupied by one of the constituent administrative districts of a nation
8. v. put before
9. n. a politically organized body of people under a single government
10. n. the federal department in the United States that sets and maintains foreign policies
11. n. the group of people comprising the government of a sovereign state