copartnership

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the state or right of being a copartner in a joint enterprise

   After five years with the firm, she was offered copartnership.

2. 2
   noun

   a company, association, or business owned jointly by copartners

   The merchants dissolved their copartnership and divided its remaining assets.

Formed from copartner + -ship, or analyzed as co- + partnership. Co- marks joint participation, while partnership denotes the legal or social relation between partners. The word has referred both to that shared status and to the jointly owned firm itself since the sixteenth century.

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