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-hood

A group of people; a condition or quality.

Old English ‑hād, originally an independent noun meaning ‘person, condition, quality’, a relative of Old High German -heit.

Examples in which the sense is of a group include brotherhood, sisterhood, and priesthood. In neighbourhood, it now has a weaker sense of an area of a town rather than the group of one's neighbours. The more common usage is of a condition or quality, as in childhood, adulthood, motherhood, falsehood, likelihood, and livelihood. See also ‑head.

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