community

 Community comes from the Latin communio, for which the Oxford English Dictionary gives two derivations. Communio as a verb comes from munio - wall - and means "to build a wall around". So a community is defined by the wall - symbolic or otherwise - around it. Everything inside the wall is the community, and everything outside the wall isn't.

That was a good definition of the community of Laguna Honda. You were a member of it just by being inside its wall. Because the hospital did have a wall, a real wall of polished rocks, piled up and shellacked by patients long ago. And we were a community simply because we were behind that wall and stuck with one another - doctor, patient, nurse, administrator, and budget. We had to do the best we could with what we had.

But communio as a noun derives from munis - gift, so communio also means "those who share a gift in common." That was true of the hospital's community, too, though it was not as obvious as the wall.

                                            -  from God's Hotel, by Victoria Sweet