diploma
Americannoun
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a document given by an educational institution conferring a degree on a person or certifying that the person has satisfactorily completed a course of study.
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a document conferring some honor, privilege, or power.
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a public or official document, especially one of historical interest.
a diploma from Carolingian times.
verb (used with object)
noun
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a document conferring a qualification, recording success in examinations or successful completion of a course of study
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an official document that confers an honour or privilege
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of diploma
1635–45; < Latin diplōma a letter of recommendation, an official document < Greek díplōma a letter folded double, equivalent to diplō-, variant stem of diploûn to double (derivative of diplóos; see diplo-) + -ma suffix of result
Explanation
A diploma is a document people receive when they graduate from a school or program. It is a symbol of academic success. You often see framed diplomas displayed in a doctor's office. Are you working toward a diploma? Then you must be in school. People receive high school and college diplomas, which they usually receive during a graduation ceremony. You could also get a diploma for a shorter series of classes in something like pottery, skydiving, or marksmanship. Even a dog could get a diploma for passing obedience school. Any time someone gets a diploma, you can be sure they finished a course or program of learning.
Vocabulary lists containing diploma
A Graduation Lexicon
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Education and Academics, List 1
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocabulary for June 3–June 9, 2023
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
She said she planned to enroll international students who want to learn English online and earn an American high school diploma.
From Salon ● Jul. 27, 2026
He had a diploma to pick up, a high school textbook to return and fall classes to register for at El Camino College.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 17, 2026
But having a diploma on the wall is no guarantee of your lawyer’s competence or ethics.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 24, 2026
Among married women with children at home and a high school diploma, 60% are employed in some form; among such women with bachelor’s degrees, 77% are; among those with higher degrees, 86% are.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 16, 2026
Was he not an engineer with a diploma from Shanghai to prove it?
From "In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson" by Bette Bao Lord
As the class of 2026 looks toward the future after securing their diplomas, some are preparing to move from their dorm room back to their childhood bedroom.
From MarketWatch ● May 21, 2026
If a college degree is no longer a sure path to a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, high school diplomas are worth even less.
From Salon ● May 4, 2026
When the tech industry executive met with his son’s guidance counselor, the school confirmed that it rarely withheld diplomas from chronically absent pupils, lest these students suffer later in life.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 3, 2026
“We were desperate, and because the people had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 15, 2025
“Are you really? Well, you know what they say—God will not look you over for medals or diplomas, but for scars. That’s Elbert Hubbard, an American essayist, if you’re interested.”
From "Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet" by Joanne Proulx
A Rubricken Bock, or collection of municipal diplomata testifies to another branch of his useful activities.
From Bartholomew Sastrow Being the Memoirs of a German Burgomaster by Sastrow, Bartholomew
Ministers, who constitute the third item of the diplomaed triad, are not free from the universal mania, and as writing sermons is not coining money, the plantations are like the vocative in Latin pronouns.
From The South-West By a Yankee. In Two Volumes. Volume 2 by Ingraham, Jonathon Holt
Miss Elbury was of the older generation of governesses, motherly, kind, but rather prim and precise, the accomplished element being supplied with diplomaed foreigners, who, since Lady Phyllis's failure in health, had been dispensed with.
From Beechcroft at Rockstone by Yonge, Charlotte Mary
They have their eyes open, and they know political economy better than our diplomaed professors.
From Sophisms of the Protectionists by White, Horace
He could drive really well, too; as for belief in himself, after six months' apprenticeship in a garage he was prepared to vivisect a six-cylinder engine with the confidence of a diplomaed bachelor of engineering.
From Three Elephant Power and Other Stories by Paterson, A. B. (Andrew Barton)
The next day a man who professed bone-setting and doctoring, albeit not diplomaed, asked me to go with him and act as interpreter to a German patient who had a broken thigh.
From Memoirs by Leland, Charles Godfrey
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
