mass adj

1 occurring widely (as to many people); "mass destruction" [syn: large-scale]

2 gathered or tending to gather into a mass or whole; "aggregate expenses include expenses of all divisions combined for the entire year"; "the aggregated amount of indebtedness" [syn: aggregate, aggregated, aggregative]

1 the property of a body that causes it to have weight in a gravitational field

2 (often followed by `of') a large number or amount or extent; "a batch of letters"; "a deal of trouble"; "a lot of money"; "he made a mint on the stock market"; "it must have cost plenty" [syn: batch, deal, flock, good deal, great deal, hatful, heap, lot, mess, mickle, mint, muckle, peck, pile, plenty, pot, quite a little, raft, sight, slew, spate, stack, tidy sum, wad, whole lot, whole slew]

3 an ill-structured collection of similar things (objects or people)

4 (Roman Catholic Church and Protestant Churches) the celebration of the Eucharist

5 a body of matter without definite shape; "a huge ice mass"

6 the common people generally; "separate the warriors from the mass"; "power to the people" [syn: multitude, masses, hoi polloi, people]

7 the property of something that is great in magnitude; "it is cheaper to buy it in bulk"; "he received a mass of correspondence"; "the volume of exports" [syn: bulk, volume]

8 a musical setting for a Mass; "they played a Mass composed by Beethoven"

9 a sequence of prayers constituting the Christian eucharistic rite; "the priest said Mass" v : join together into a mass or collect or form a mass; "Crowds were massing outside the palace" [also: masses (pl)]masses n : the common people generally; "separate the warriors from the mass"; "power to the people" [syn: multitude, mass, hoi polloi, people]masses See mass

English

Pronunciation

Noun

masses

1. Plural of mass, especially when referring to multiple groups of people.

   ...the ignorant masses...

   "Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses..." (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

Verb

masses

1. third person singular of mass

See also

• unwashed masses

French

Verb

1. Form of Second-person singular present subjunctive, masser#French|masser

Mass may refer to:

In science

• Mass, the amount of matter in an object to which its weight is proportional
  • Rest mass, the mass of a particle or other object while at rest in a particular reference frame
  • Invariant mass, mass defined in such a way as to be invariant in all reference frames
• Thermal mass, a mass which absorbs heat
• Mass (mass spectrometry), a chemical analysis technique
• Mass (medicine), a tumor
• Mass wasting, the geomorphic process by which soil and rock move downslope under gravity
• True mass, the mass of a planet, used to differentiate from a lower limit on mass
• Landmass, a continuous area of land or land mass, the measure of an area of land
• Body mass index, a health indicator related to human body weight and height

In religion

• Mass (liturgy), religious service in some Christian churches
• Mass (music), a choral composition that sets liturgical text to music

In entertainment

• Mass (film), a Tollywood film starring Akkineni Nagarjuna
• Mass (theatre), a 1971 musical setting of the Roman Catholic Mass by Leonard Bernstein
• Mass (English band), a post-punk band who recorded for the 4AD label
• The Mass (band), an American jazzcore band
• Mass, an alias of electronic musician Peter Harris (Blu Peter)

Other uses

• College-Ready Math-Science School, The Marc and Eva Stern Math and Science School or just (Stern MASS)
• Mass., an abbreviation for the U.S. state of Massachusetts
• Isaac Mass, a Franklin County, Massachusetts politician
• Maß, a unit of volume in German, pronounced 'mass'
• Muscle mass, a bodybuilding term concerning the configuration of muscles in a person's body

As an adjective meaning many

Mass may be used to modify nouns to apply to many cases or instances:

• mass production
• mass transit
• mass communication
• mass education
• mass marketing
• mass media
• mass murder
• mass suicide
• weapons of mass destruction
• mass burial
• mass hallucination
• mass hysteria
• mass storage

In plural

The plural form, masses, may refer to:

• The working class or the people
• Hoi polloi (or "the masses"), a term that usually refers to common people
• The Masses, a Socialist magazine

See also

• Matter
• Weight

cog, commonality, commonalty, creature, flunky, follower, hoi polloi, ignobile vulgus, inferior, junior, lightweight, lower class, lower orders, many-headed multitude, mobile vulgus, pawn, second fiddle, secondary, subaltern, subordinate, the common herd, the crowd, the great unnumbered, the great unwashed, the herd, the hoi polloi, the horde, the majority, the many, the masses, the mob, the multitude, third stringer, underling, understrapper, yes-man