agora
1 Americannoun
plural
agorae-
a popular political assembly.
-
the place where such an assembly met, originally a marketplace or public square.
-
the Agora, the chief marketplace of Athens, center of the city's civic life.
noun
plural
agorotnoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of agora1
First recorded in 1590–1600; from Greek agorā́ “assembly (of the common people, not the nobility), marketplace,” derivative of ageírein “to gather together”
Origin of agora2
First recorded in 1960–65; from Hebrew ăgōrāh “coin, payment,” from āgār “to hire”
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.
It’s a lovely image: Kirk as a modern-day Socrates, wandering the agora of America’s universities seeking to find truth by means of rhetorical contest.
From Salon
The report is the initial phase of an ambitious effort to map the modern agora, referring to the lively assembly places of ancient Greece often considered to be the birthplace of democracy.
From Science Daily
Futel describes its mission as preserving “public telephone hardware as a means of providing access to the agora for everybody,” using a Greek term for central public space.
From Seattle Times
“We offer the program online, but we always anticipated giving students the opportunity to be in a public square or a Roman forum or Greek agora,” said Louise Mirrer, the Historical Society president and C.E.O.
From New York Times
Then there was the Umayyad mosque, built on the site of a Hellenistic agora, called after the dynasty that founded it in the eighth century but its surviving fabric coming from later periods.
From The Guardian
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.
