Also 6–7 colonie, 7 collony. [ME. colonie, ad. (partly through OF. colonie) L. colōnia, f. colōn-us tiller, farmer, cultivator, planter, settler in a new country.
L. colōnia had thus the senses of ‘farm,’ ‘landed estate,’ ‘settlement,’ and was esp. the proper term for a public settlement of Roman citizens in a hostile or newly conquered country, where they, retaining their Roman citizenship, received lands, and acted as a garrison, being mostly formed of veteran soldiers who had served their time; hence it was applied to the place so occupied, or to towns which were raised to the same rank and privileges. Among the nine Roman coloniæ in Britain, were London, Bath, Chester, Lincoln. The Roman writers further used their word colōnia to translate Gr. ἀποικία a settlement of ἄποικοι, lit. ‘people from home,’ i.e., a body of emigrants who settled abroad as an independent self-governed πόλις or state, unconnected with the μητρόπολις or mother city save by religious ties. But in later Greek it was app. felt that the ἀποικία was not properly equivalent to the Roman colōnia, which was therefore used untranslated as κολωνία (Acts xvi. 12). It was esp. in reference to the Roman colōniæ that the word made its first appearance in the mod. langs., as in 14th c. French in Bercheure (see Littré). In Eng., Wyclif used it in Acts xvi. 12, but this was app. a mere literalism, and was not continued in the 16th c. versions. Its modern application to the planting of settlements, after Roman or Greek precedents, in newly discovered lands, was made, in the 16th c., by Latin and Italian writers, whose works were rendered into English by Richard Eden.]
I. After Roman use.
† 1. A farm, estate in the country; a rural settlement. Obs.
1566. Painter, Pal. Pleas., I. 12. The rurall people abandoning their colonies fled for rescue into the citie.
1613. Heywood, Brazen Age, II. ii. The Collonies into the Citties flye, And till immur’d, they thinke themselues not safe.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Colonie … Also a Grange or Farm, where husbandry is kept.
2. Applied to a Roman colōnia.
1382. Wyclif, Acts xvi. 12. To Philippis, that is the firste part of Macedonye, the citee colonye [Vulg. colonia; Gr. κολωνία; Tindale, Cranmer, a free citie; Geneva whose inhabitants came from Rome to dwell there; Rheims a colónia; 1611 a Colonie. Rheims, 1583, explains ‘colónia is such a citie where the most inhabitants are strangers, sent thither from the great cities and states, namely from the Romans’].
1600. Holland, Livy, 147 (R.). When they had registered and placed the coloners, they remained still themselves in the same colonie.
1616. Bullokar, Among the Romans … the place to which they were sent was called by the name of Colonie.
1781. Gibbon, Decl. & F., II. xvii. 21. Bestowed on the rising city the title of Colony, the first and most favoured daughter of ancient Rome.
3. Applied to a Greek ἀποικία.
1580. North, Plutarch (1676), 562. He draue out the barbarous People, and made a Colony of it, of sundry Nations.
1611. Bible, Wisd., xii. 7. That the land which thou esteemest aboue all other, might receiue a worthy colonie [ἀποικίαν, Coverd. be a dwellinge] of Gods children.
1728. Newton, Chronol. Amended, i. 126. The Greeks began … to send Colonies into Sicily.
1839. Thirlwall, Greece, I. 387. From the Greek colonies in Europe, Africa, and Asia.
1849. Grote, Greece, II. xxii. (ed. 2), III. 474. The earliest Grecian colony in Italy or Sicily, of which we know the precise date, is placed about 735 B.C. Ibid., II. xxvii. IV. 39. Thera was the mother-city [of the colony Kyrene], herself a colony from Lacedæmon.
II. In modern application.
4. A settlement in a new country; a body of people who settle in a new locality, forming a community subject to or connected with their parent state; the community so formed, consisting of the original settlers and their descendants and successors, as long as the connection with the parent state is kept up.
1548–9. Compl. Scot., x. (1872), 82. To preue that scotland vas ane colone of ingland quhen it vas fyrst inhabit.
1555. Eden, Decades, II. I. 56. (fr. Latin of Peter Martyr 1516), Vppon the bankes … they [Pizarro, etc.] entended to playnte their newe colonie or habitacion. Ibid., 252. (fr. Italian) Which thynge they [Christian Princes] myght easely brynge to passe by assignynge colonies to inhabite dyuers places of that hemispherie, in lyke maner as dyd the Romanes in provinces newely subdued.
1613. Purchas, Pilgrimage, VIII. ii. 612. O name Colon … which to the worlds end hast conducted Colonies.
1651. Hobbes, Leviath., II. xxii. 118. Colonies sent from England, to plant Virginia, [etc.].
1775. Burke, Sp. Conc. Amer., Wks. III. 73. The colonies … complain, that they are taxed in a Parliament in which they are not represented.
1883. Seeley, Expans. Eng., 38. By a colony we understand a community which is not merely derivative, but which remains politically connected in a relation of dependence with the parent community.
b. The territory peopled by such a community.
(In early use not clearly distinguished.)
1612. Davies, Why Ireland, etc. 50. Neither did he extend the Iurisdiction … further then the English Colonies, wherein it was vsed and exercised before.
1632. Massinger, City Madam, III. iii. (1658), 47. They have liv’d long In the English Colonie, and speak our language As their own Dialect.
1758. Johnson, Idler, No. 35, ¶ 3. A ship stored for a voyage to the colonies.
1888. Daily News, 4 Jan., 2/3. Since our last telegram heavy rains have been general in the colonies.
5. transf. A number of people of a particular nationality residing in a foreign city or country (especially in one quarter or district); a body of people of the same occupation settled among others, or inhabiting a particular locality. b. The district or quarter inhabited by such a body of people.
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 31, ¶ 3. To furnish us every Year with a Colony of Musicians.
1737. Swift, Badges to Beggars. Colonies of beggars.
1844. Lingard, Anglo-Sax. Ch. (1858), II. xiii. 268. He was compelled to collect a colony of monks from monasteries in Gaul.
1885. Daily News, 3 Nov., 5/6. The freehold ‘colonies’ [in the Potteries] … show no mean taste in architecture and decoration.
Mod. A well-known member of the English colony at Moscow.
6. transf. and fig. of animals, etc.
1658. Sir T. Browne, Hydriot., iii. 17. The Earth whereof all things are but a colony.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Georg., IV. 28. Calls out the vent’rous Colony to swarm.
1713. Warder, True Amazons, 105. To keep Bees in Boxes or Colonies.
1760. Life & Adv. of Cat, 6. The other species are as fond of forming colonies as we are.
1840. Dickens, Barn. Rudge, i. Colonies of sparrows chirped … in the eaves.
7. Geol. Applied by Barrande to a group of fossil forms appearing exceptionally in a formation other than that of which they are characteristic.
1859–78. Darwin, Orig. Spec., xi. (ed. 6), 291. The so-called ‘colonies’ of M. Barrande, which intrude for a period in the midst of an older formation and then allow the pre-existing fauna to reappear.
1885. Geikie, Text-bk. Geol., v. § 6. 618.
8. Biol. An aggregate of individual animals or plants, forming a physiologically connected structure, as in the case of the compound ascidians, coral-polyps, etc.
1872. H. A. Nicholson, Palæont., 192. The external investment of the colony—the ‘cœnœcium’ or ‘polyzoarium.’
1888. Rolleston & Jackson, Anim. Life, 323. A Tapeworm is not a colony composed of an asexual head and sexual proglottides or segments. Ibid., 725. [In the colonial Anthozoa] They [the zooids] … then usually form a massive colony in which the individuals are united by a plentiful common basis or coenosarc.
9. attrib., = COLONIAL.
1776. Adam Smith, W. N., II. IV. vii. 177. The colony trade has been continually increasing.
1780. Burke, Sp. Econ. Ref., Wks. III. 320. In the management of the colony politicks.
