gymnasium
Pluralgymnasia, gymnasiums
- 1A large room or building set aside for indoor sports and physical exercise.
The gymnasium was packed for the championship game on Friday night.
Several gymnasiums in the city host indoor track meets each winter.
Similargym
Note
The everyday sports hall carries a startling origin. Greek gumnasion comes from gumnos, "naked," because Greek athletes trained unclothed. Among speakers the clipped form gym does most of the work, while the full word has a formal ring that suits signage, plans and official writing. Both plurals are in use: the English gymnasiums and the Latin gymnasia.
- 2In some European countries, a secondary school whose students are usually preparing to go on to university.
In Germany, completing the gymnasium is the standard route to a university place.
Several gymnasiums in the region focus heavily on the sciences.
Note
A school that takes up the other half of the Greek word: gumnasion meant "school" as well as "exercise," and the ancient Greek complex had halls for conversation alongside its wrestling grounds. In German-speaking systems especially, it names the selective academic track that leads to university, set apart from vocational schools. Grammar school and prep school are close in spirit, but neither maps exactly onto it.
- 3A public place or building in ancient Greece where young men exercised, with grounds for running and wrestling, baths, and halls for conversation.
Athletes oiled their bodies before wrestling at the gymnasium.
The city's gymnasiums drew crowds of youths for running and boxing.
Note
Here the word is a historian's term, used for the ancient institution rather than any modern building. More than a training ground, it was a civic center for free-born youths that also hosted philosophical teaching and social gathering. Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum grew up on such grounds. In writing about classical Greece, keep it distinct from the modern sports hall.
Practice
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Origin
From Latin gymnasium, itself from Ancient Greek gumnásion ("exercise, school"), which derives from gumnós ("naked"): because Greek athletes trained naked.