Other forms: quorums, quora
A quorum is the smallest number who must attend for a decision to count. Reach a quorum, quorum is five, inquorate.
Without one, a meeting cannot make binding decisions, which is why counting heads is the first item of business. The number is set in the rules of the body. Note inquorate, the word for a meeting that has failed to reach one; and that quorum is Latin for of whom — the first word of a commission naming which members had to be present.
1nounquorumThe smallest number who must attend for a decision to count.
“The meeting had to be cancelled because not enough members came to make a quorum.”
quorum is a minimum attendance.
Latin quorum means of whom. Commissions once began by naming members whose presence was required, using the phrase quorum vos unum esse volumus, and the first word became the noun.
Latin
quōrum
Anglo-Norman
quorum
Middle English
quorum
English, today
quorum
Built from
Middle English quorum (1426), from Anglo-Norman quorum, clipped from the Anglo-Latin wording of commissions in which certain persons were specially designated as members of a body by the words quorum vos unum esse volumus ad etc. (“of whom we want you to be one assigned to etc.”). Latin quōrum is the masculine plural of the relative pronoun quī (“who”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA