These words refer to a small cluster of friends that excludes outsiders and confers status on those who belong. Of these, clique is the most pejorative in tone and points to the fewest members. It also most strongly suggests both secrecy and snobbishness; in its quasi-official rigidity, in fact, it may all but resemble a social club: a clearly defined clique of teenage girls who set style and fashion for their whole high school; a clique of conservative officers within the War Ministry. No person would describe his closet friends and himself as a clique ?except to disparage them and himself. Circle , by contrast, carries no pejorative judgement and could be used descriptively either by an outsider or by a member of a social cluster: a circle of impressionist painters in the 1890s; my circle of friends. The word implies less intimacy than clique , but does suggest mutuality of interests, frequency of gathering, and possibly, decorous civility carried out on a more formal social scale than clique : Mme. de Staël and her circle of intelligentsia.

Coterie , although more formal than either, more closely resembles clique than circle . It is not necessarily so pejorative as clique , however, and points to a larger cluster of friends with perhaps wider interests, less exclusive status, and with the possibility of greater social fluidity. While every member of a clique or circle , for example, would be well acquainted with every other member, the members of a coterie might be more on a more personal or familiar basis. Also, a clique or circle might point more strictly to sociability as a motivating factor, while coterie may more often suggest some uniting ideal or purpose beyond mere camaraderie: the coterie of Fabian socialists whose ideals were ultimately embodied in the Labour Party.

Group and set are much less restricted in meaning than these other words. Group , when referring to social clusters, may range in suggestiveness from the intense intimacy of clique to a much vaguer casualness that includes all the friends and acquaintances one happens to have: my group at college; a group of young mothers who met in the park over their prams. Set indicates a much larger group of members than any of these other words; while it may be used more neutrally to indicate a particular social group that can be classified as to status and similar interests. Where clique all but suggests a club, set all but implies a class or caste of people. Most important, members of a set need not even know on another: modish dress that obviously indicated they were members of the fast-living, world-travelling jet set . Set , used of a smaller group , is even more emphatic about status, although this need not approach the snobbishness implicit in clique : falling in with a set of young executives who spend their weekends on the harbour.