theater
Americannoun
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a building, part of a building, or outdoor area for housing dramatic performances or stage entertainments, or for showing movies.
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the audience at a theatrical performance or movie.
The whole theater was weeping.
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a theatrical or acting company.
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a room or hall, fitted with tiers of seats rising like steps, used for lectures, surgical demonstrations, etc..
Students crowded into the operating theater.
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the theater, dramatic performances as a branch of art; the field or discipline of staged drama.
an actress devoted to the theater.
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Often the theater dramatic works collectively, as of literature, a nation, or an author.
the theater of Ibsen.
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the quality or effectiveness of dramatic performance: bad theater;
good theater;
bad theater;
pure theater.
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a place of dramatic action, especially during a war.
the Pacific theater during World War II.
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a public display of action or speech that gives a false impression of accomplishing or promising something, merely for the sake of appearances (often used in combination): Public health experts have said that the time and money spent on cleaning may be unnecessary hygiene theater. Forget all his blustering about doing what's best for our city—it's just theater to please his union masters and protect his political base.
Washington D.C.'s Metro transit system has instituted random bag searches, and many travelers are just as unhappy about the security theater on the train as in the airport.
Public health experts have said that the time and money spent on cleaning may be unnecessary hygiene theater.
Companies need to go beyond diversity theater and commit to long-term, concrete metrics for change.
Forget all his blustering about doing what's best for our city—it's just theater to please his union masters and protect his political base.
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a natural formation of land rising by steps or gradations.
Pronunciation
Theater, an early Middle English borrowing from French, originally had its primary stress on the second syllable: . As with many early French borrowings ( beauty, carriage, marriage ), the stress moved to the first syllable, in conformity with a common English pattern of stress, and this pattern remains the standard one for theater today: . A pronunciation with stress on the second syllable and the vowel , as or sometimes is characteristic chiefly of a nonstandard regional pronunciation in the United States that may be perceived as uneducated.
Other Word Forms
- nontheater adjective
- pretheater adjective
Etymology
Origin of theater
First recorded in 1325–75; Middle English theatre, from Latin theātrum, from Greek théātron “seeing place, theater,” equivalent to theā-, stem of theâsthai “to view” + -tron suffix denoting means or place
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.
“What we’re seeing in theaters —the energy, the exit scores, the word of mouth — is everything we believed this film would deliver.”
From Los Angeles Times
The theater’s walk-up food window is serving pizza-inspired baked potatoes, a colored chocolate pretzel meant to mimic an asparagus pretzel wand, and more.
From Los Angeles Times
I know that sounds like a desperate postmodern gambit, but it pays hilarious and chilling dividends by turning episodes previously recounted only in disputed legal proceedings into confrontational Brechtian theater.
From Salon
There was a movie theater and the original Canter’s Deli opened here.
From Los Angeles Times
Gurule started community college after graduation and studied theater, thinking she would like to act.
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.
