Congregation

1. n. the name assumed by the Protestant party under John Knox. The leaders called themselves (1557) Lords of the Congregation.
2. n. The act of congregating, or bringing together, or of collecting into one aggregate or mass.
3. n. A collection or mass of separate things.
4. n. An assembly of persons; a gathering; esp. an assembly of persons met for the worship of God, and for religious instruction; a body of people who habitually so meet.
5. n. The whole body of the Jewish people; — called also Congregation of the Lord.
6. n. A body of cardinals or other ecclesiastics to whom as intrusted some department of the church business; as, the Congregation of the Propaganda, which has charge of the missions of the Roman Catholic Church.
7. n. A company of religious persons forming a subdivision of a monastic order.
8. n. The assemblage of Masters and Doctors at Oxford or Cambrige University, mainly for the granting of degrees.

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.