gymnasium
/dʒɪmˈneɪzɪəm
/noun (plural gymnasiums or gymnasia /dʒɪmˈneɪzɪə/)
1A room or building equipped for gymnastics, games, and other physical exercise.They also put forward the idea that school gymnasiums, exercise rooms and pools could be geared specifically to adolescent groups during evening hours....
- To cap it all, the building's architecture is redolent of the classical Greek culture that originally founded the concept of gymnasia and held physical exercises in the very highest esteem.
- The four of us, after changing into gym clothes came out of the locker room into the gymnasium.
2ɡɪmˈnɑːzɪəm A school in Germany, Scandinavia, or central Europe that prepares pupils for university entrance.The gymnasium trains German pupils for university and has a reputation for high academic standards....
- The students still found themselves inadequately prepared by their gymnasiums for university work, and expressed their dissatisfactions by demonstrations and disorders.
- The latest count of overnight arson attacks, still incomplete, could rise further police said, adding that it did not include shops, gymnasiums, nursery schools and other targets attacked by bands of youths.
Derivatives
gymnasial
- Even though the director and the gentleman make a monkey out of him in the ring, his gymnasial fragrance lingers on.
- But the special object of the German gymnasial course is to prepare for the university.
- This was an important event that occurred upon reaching the age of 14, also the age at which one began to pay the poll tax, and in which a male youth was now a part of the elite gymnasial class.
Origin
Late 16th century: via Latin from Greek gumnasion, from gumnazein 'exercise naked', from gumnos 'naked'.
Ancient Greek men exercised naked. This fact is preserved in the origin of the word gymnasium, which came into English from Latin but is ultimately from Greek gumnazein ‘to exercise or train naked’, gumnos being the Greek word for ‘naked’. The shortened form gym first appeared in the late 19th century.