commonwealth

Meaning

Noun

• The well-being of a community.
• The entirety of a (secular) society, a polity, a state.

Origin

• From common + wealth.
• From c. 1450 as common wele (commonweal). In the form common-wealth (common welthe) from c. 1520, used by Tyndale in the sense "secular society" in particular, for which other authors preferred publike weal.
• Also from the 1520s treated as a synonym or loan-translation of res publica (republic) (Rollison 2017:67f).