Editor's Corner

Okay, for the first part you’ll have to dig up a Paul Simon CD. But as far as having a meeting goes, DailyWritingTips.com is serving up a ton of terms to describe different types of gatherings. Today I’m delivering your first serving of fifteen.

Humans, being social animals, have many reasons for meeting — and many words to describe doing so in various degrees of formality and format. Here are thirty ways to label a meeting, depending on the particulars.

1. Assembly: a meeting for entertainment, legislation, or worship

2. Caucus: a meeting, often in a political context, to select candidates or policy

3. Clinic: a problem-solving meeting or one at which participants acquire knowledge or skills [KC – Note: A methadone clinic is not where you learn to use methadone.]

4. Colloquium: a meeting at which experts, usually in an academic setting, give presentations on one or more topics and engage in a question-and-answer period

5. Colloquy: a serious, important meeting (also, a synonym for conversation and dialogue)

6. Conclave: a private or secret meeting, especially that of Roman Catholic cardinals convened to select a new pope, or any gathering of an organization

7. Confab: a chat, discussion, or meeting (informal usage) [KC – From confabulation: conversation, chat.]

8. Conference: a meeting for discussing issues or topics of interest to all participants, usually including keynote speeches and a wide variety of sessions on specific subjects

9. Congress: a meeting or session, especially of delegates to discuss and act on an issue or topic

10. Convention: a meeting to bring together representatives of a trade, profession, or interest group, or to assemble representatives of a political party to select candidates and policy

11. Convocation: a meeting of attendees called together, of a college or university’s members, or of clergy (and perhaps laypeople)

12. Council: a meeting to discuss or advise on one or more issues

13. Demonstration: an informal mass meeting, usually held outdoors on public property, to protest about or bring attention to a topic or issue [KC – Or, at the local county fair, a man making vegetable juice and trying to sell you THREE-THREE-THREE BLENDERS IN ONE!]

14. Forum: a meeting that involves a discussion among experts or between them and audience members

15. Gathering: a meeting (informal usage)

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

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