A pretty awesome last name, with the likes of Nottingham winger Kris Commons flaunting it. Families in North Lincolnshire choose to respond to Commons rather than their first name.
Pretty muchthe only place for kids from canton, avon, simsbury, and other surrounding towns to hang out on the weekends and weekdays during the summer.
The commons is a dining hall at Texas A&M University, with some of the worst food in the country. The commons diet refers to the struggle First Semester Freshmen have to face while dining the trash that some people think is food for the first week. At first, people think that a large meal plan is worth, but after sticking the commons diet, patients tend to try and leave it as soon as possible by telling the Dining Staff that they are of a certain dietary restriction in order to limit their intake at the commons. Some Commons Diet patients even resort to going to Sbisa, another dining hall that serves even worse food, because of the destruction the Commons Diet does to a person's internals.
The term has its origins in the sharing of grazing land in a given community, called "the commons", in Britain. An individual farmer could increase his or her profits by using more of the commons than others. The other farmers would then follow suite, leading to the overexploitation and destruction of that land.
In its modern usage, the phrase is used as a metaphor to the above, referring to the exploitation of a common resource. In game theory it is used as an example of how, in a given situation, every individual can choose to do what is best for their own interests and still produce the worst sum result for the whole. See also: prisoner's dilemna.
The most common and effective way to negotiate this problem is private ownership. Another way is heavy regulation and the imposition of sanctions on violators.
A play on the phrase tragedy of the commons. In the tragedy of the commons, each person tries to maximize their own benefit, and the end result is that everyone loses because of overutilization of limited resources. In the comedy of the commons, each person, while getting something for themselves, also (directly or indirectly) contributes back to the common good at the same time.