cooperative
Americanadjective
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working or acting together willingly for a common purpose or benefit.
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demonstrating a willingness to cooperate.
The librarian was cooperative in helping us find the book.
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pertaining to economic cooperation.
a cooperative business.
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involving or denoting an educational program comprising both classroom study and on-the-job or technical training, especially in colleges and universities.
noun
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a jointly owned enterprise engaging in the production or distribution of goods or the supplying of services, operated by its members for their mutual benefit, typically organized by consumers or farmers.
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Also called co-op. Also called cooperative apartment.
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a building owned and managed by a corporation in which shares are sold, entitling the shareholders to occupy individual units in the building.
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an apartment in such a building.
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adjective
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willing to cooperate; helpful
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acting in conjunction with others; cooperating
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(of an enterprise, farm, etc) owned collectively and managed for joint economic benefit
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(of an economy or economic activity) based on collective ownership and cooperative use of the means of production and distribution
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noun
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a cooperative organization
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Sometimes shortened to: coop. Also called: cooperative apartment. a block of flats belonging to a corporation in which shares are owned in proportion to the relative value of the flat occupied Compare condominium
Other Word Forms
- co-operatively adverb
- co-operativeness noun
- cooperatively adverb
- cooperativeness noun
- uncooperative adjective
- uncooperatively adverb
- uncooperativeness noun
Etymology
Origin of cooperative
From the Late Latin word cooperātīvus, dating back to 1595–1605. See cooperate, -ive
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The South Africa case shows the value of engaging cooperative authorities to support dismantlement and international verification.
In the region served by the rural electric cooperative North East Mississippi Electric Power Association, virtually all 30,000 customers lost power on Sunday.
"Smallholders run up debts with cooperatives and sellers of crop protection products to try to improve production" and this worsens the cycle of poverty, he added.
From Barron's
A similar shift appears in some wolf and fox species, which practice forms of social monogamy and cooperative care, even though their ancestral canids were likely group-living and polygynous.
From Science Daily
“But if he did bury a snake for somebody else, it’s the first cooperative thing he’s ever done in his life, and I just think we ought to drop the whole subject, don’t you?”
From Literature
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
