the.com/coterie
A friend group with a velvet rope and no bouncer in sight.
means A small, exclusive circle of people bound together by shared taste, status, or purpose — intimate by nature, closed by implication.
from From French coterie, which in medieval use named a group of peasants jointly holding land from a feudal lord — a shared-tenancy club, essentially. The word drifted upward in meaning over centuries, shedding its agricultural roots and settling into high society, where it came to mean an exclusive clique bound by mutual interest rather than shared soil.
- origin
- from old french for tenant farmer group
- exclusivity
- implied, never advertised, always enforced
- size rule
- small enough everyone knows the gossip
- vs clique
- sounds classier, acts identically petty