university
/ˌjunəˈvərsədi/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.39 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
5
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An institution of higher education that provides facilities for teaching, research, and the conferral of academic degrees across undergraduate, graduate, and often professional levels.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "She's studying mathematics at university."
- "The only reason why I haven't gone to university is because I can't afford it."
- "During the whole time of his abode in the university he generally spent thirteen hours of the day in study; by which assiduity besides an exact dispatch of the whole course of philosophy, he read over in a manner all classic authors that are extant[…]"
- "Since the launch early last year of […] two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete. […] EdX is taking yet another tack, selling its MOOC technology to universities like Stanford, both to create their own MOOC offerings and to make physically attending university more attractive, by augmenting existing teaching."
- "The most compelling stories of whether university is worth it are examples where a university education lifts the economic standing of a poor or disadvantaged student to a higher socioeconomic position."
- "The NIAID supports projects at universities and research organizations around the United States as well as a network of 21 NIAID labs across the country."
Etymology
From Middle English universite (“institution of higher learning, body of persons constituting a university”) from Anglo-Norman université, from Old French universitei, from Medieval Latin stem of universitas, in juridical and Late Latin "a number of persons associated into one body, a society, company, community, guild, corporation, etc"; in Latin, "the whole, aggregate," from universus (“whole, entire”). By surface analysis, universe + -ity.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: universite, université, universitei, -
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˌjunəˈvərsədi/
- British English: /junɪˈvɜːsəti/