campus
- 1The grounds and buildings of a school, college, university, business, church, or hospital, often including all its structures.
The hospital campus spans several blocks and includes a research wing.
Employees badged into the corporate campus before sunrise.
UsageStudents live on campus or off campus, usually with no the. Plural campuses.
Note
A Latin word for "field" that was first used at Princeton in the 1770s for an open stretch of college grounds. The sense has since stretched well beyond colleges to hospitals, churches and the corporate campuses of technology firms.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Campus was borrowed from Latin campus, meaning field. en.wiktionary.org
- The college-grounds sense originated at Princeton in the 1770s, referring to open ground. campusplan.princeton.edu
- 2An institution of higher education taken together with its characteristic atmosphere and surroundings.
The small liberal-arts campus prides itself on close ties between students and faculty.
He chose the university for its vibrant campus and lively debate culture.
Similarcollege, university
Less common meanings
- 3To confine a student to the grounds of a school or college as a punishment.
A secondary punishment was ‘campussing’, or confinement to a campus; and for the most trivial offences the treatment was a withering harangue from Mrs Wilmington, sometimes lasting for over an hour.
1955, The Twentieth Century - 4To train on a campus board, or to climb using only the hands and arms while keeping the feet off the holds.
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Origin
The word is Latin campus ("field"), taken directly into English, and camp and champ are doublets of it. In the 1770s it was first used in today's sense, for Princeton University.