stadium
Meanings
noun
- A venue where sporting events are held.
- An Ancient Greek racecourse, especially, the Olympic course for foot races.
- Synonym of stadion, a Greek unit of length equivalent to about 185 m.
- A kind of telemeter for measuring the distance of an object of known dimensions, by observing the angle it subtends.
- 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.
- A life stage of an organism.
Pronunciation
Word forms
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.
Synonyms
Derived words
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