clique

Plural: cliques

Noun

• an exclusive circle of people with a common purpose
• A small, exclusive group of individuals, usually according to lifestyle or social status; a cabal.
• A subgraph isomorphic to a complete graph.
• A group of related web sites that link to each other, like a webring but with exclusive membership determined by the clique owner.

Verb

Verb Forms: cliqued, cliquing, cliques

• To form a small, exclusive group of people.
• To associate together in a clannish way; to act with others secretly to gain a desired end; to plot.

Examples

• The high-value letters seemed to CLIQUE together, refusing to form a usable word.
• The problem of finding the largest clique in an arbitrary graph is NP-complete.
• This school used to be really friendly, but now everyone keeps to their own cliques.

Synonyms

camp, coterie, ingroup, inner circle, pack

Antonyms

independent set

Related Words

claque, cliquey