kingdom: Meaning and Definition of

king•dom

Pronunciation: (king'dum), [key]
— n.
  1. a state or government having a king or queen as its head.
  2. anything conceived as constituting a realm or sphere of independent action or control: the kingdom of thought.
  3. a realm or province of nature, esp. one of the three broad divisions of natural objects: the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms.
  4. a taxonomic category of the highest rank, grouping together all forms of life having certain fundamental characteristics in common: in the five-kingdom classification scheme adopted by many biologists, separate kingdoms are assigned to animals (Animalia), plants (Plantae), fungi (Fungi), protozoa and eucaryotic algae (Protista), and bacteria and blue-green algae (Monera).
  5. the spiritual sovereignty of God or Christ.
  6. the domain over which the spiritual sovereignty of God or Christ extends, whether in heaven or on earth.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.
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