stadium
/ˈsteɪ.di.əm/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.63 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An Ancient Greek racecourse, especially, the Olympic course for foot races.
noun
Synonym of stadion, a Greek unit of length equivalent to about 185 m.
noun
A kind of telemeter for measuring the distance of an object of known dimensions, by observing the angle it subtends.
noun
A graduated rod used to measure the distance of the place where it stands from an instrument having a telescope, by observing the number of the graduations of the rod that are seen between certain parallel wires (stadia wires) in the field of view of the telescope.
noun
A life stage of an organism.
Example Sentences
- "He is going for a cricket match at the stadium."
- "In a convulsion that has caught many in Brazil and beyond by surprise, waves of protesters denounced their leaders for dedicating so many resources to cultivating Brazil’s global image by building stadiums for international events, when basic services like education and health care remain woefully inadequate."
- "Dionysiodorus[…]sent a letter ad superos after he was dead, from the centre of the earth, to signify what distance the same centre was from the superficies of the same, viz. 42,000 stadiums […]."
Etymology
From Latin stadium (“a measure of length, a race course”) (commonly one-eighth of a Roman mile; translated in early English Bibles by furlong), from Ancient Greek στάδιον (stádion, “a measure of length, a running track”), especially the track at Olympia, which was one stadium in length. The Greek word may literally mean "fixed standard of length" (from στάδιος (stádios, “firm, fixed”), from Proto-Indo-European *steh₂-, whence also stand and Latin stare). Doublet of stade, stadion, and estadio. Displaced native Old English spyrd.
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: stadium, στάδιον, *steh₂-
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Sports.
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
all-seater stadium
stadia rod
stadia wire
stadium horn
stadium mustard
stadium rock
stadium sailing
stadium trumpet