membership

Etymology

From member + -ship.

noun

1. The state of being a member of a group or organization.
   The terms of membership agreement were vague.
   He has memberships in clubs in three cities.
2. The body of members of an organization.
   The memberships of the state chapters elect delegates to the national convention.
3. (mathematics) The fact of being a member of a set.

verb

1. (transitive, sociolinguistics) To classify (someone) as belonging to a certain group or community.
   Whatever the topic of the conversation the speaker must ‘membership’ his listener, put him into one of two or more mutually exclusive boxes. Each time a topic changes the listener must be re-membershipped, and during a conversation the same person may be membershipped as a doctor, a rugby player, a liberal, a gardener, a bridge player. 1975 April, Malcolm Coulthard, “Discourse Analysis in English – A Short Review of the Literature”, in Language Teaching, volume 8, number 2, →DOI, page 83