museum
Americannoun
-
museums
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of museum
1605–15; < Latin mūsēum place sacred to the Muses, building devoted to learning or the arts (referring especially to the scholarly institute founded in Alexandria about 280 b.c.) < Greek Mouseîon, equivalent to Moûs ( a ) Muse + -eion suffix of place
Explanation
A museum is a place where interesting objects are displayed — like paintings, historical documents, and dinosaur skeletons. There are all kinds of museums. Art museums are some of the most well-known, such as the Louvre in Paris. The Natural History Museum, with its dinosaur skeletons and stuffed bears and lions, is one of New York's most famous. In Washington, DC, the Smithsonian is a group of impressive museums. Around the country, there are museums dedicated to sports, African-American culture, spies, and just about everything else. At any museum, you'll find a lot of tourists.
Vocabulary lists containing museum
"A Suitcase of Seaweed" and "Immigrants Today"
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Unit 5
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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:
The results of this analysis, as well as previously unseen archive material about the gem's history and theft, form part of the exhibition, according to the museum.
From BBC ● Oct. 17, 2026
Bloomer also emphasized that the investigation would not have been possible without museum collections.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 16, 2026
“It will be exhibited at the Louvre when we have found the ideal location to create a dedicated, secure exhibition space,” the museum said, “but for now, not all conditions are in place.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026
But instead of closing the exhibit, the museum deliberately reopened it the next day as a show of confidence in its security measures, adding that the exhibit ultimately received more than 70,000 visitors.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026
On Sunday, the man had come to the Louvre just like any other visitor, but when the museum was closing, he didn’t do what the other visitors did.
From "The Mona Lisa Vanishes" by Nicholas Day
The gallery, added in 1966, has cultivated a reputation for small exhibitions, often about highly specialized topics, frequently curated by academics, and borrowed directly, of late, from regional Chinese museums.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 2026
Kelly said he’s often hired by museums to assess their security protocols and they’re shocked when he tells them they can upgrade their video cameras for “hundreds, not thousands” of dollars.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026
A spate of heists at French museums -- including at the Louvre -- has highlighted inadequate security in some cases and led to questions about whether criminal gangs see them as soft targets.
From Barron's ● Oct. 12, 2026
The UK government said on Tuesday that national museums would remain free for foreign visitors, after previously floating the idea of charging tourists an entry fee to buoy the cash-strapped sector.
From Barron's ● Sep. 29, 2026
How about the old-fashioned kind of art, the kind in museums that turned up on postcards and posters in people’s kitchens, the kind that they’d been talking about in school today?
From "Chasing Vermeer" by Blue Balliett
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
