gymnasium
1 Americannoun
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a building or room designed and equipped for indoor sports, exercise, or physical education.
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a place where Greek youths met for exercise and discussion.
noun
noun
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a large room or hall equipped with bars, weights, ropes, etc, for games or physical training
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(in various European countries) a secondary school that prepares pupils for university
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of gymnasium1
1590–1600; < Latin: a public school for gymnastics < Greek gymnásion gymnastic school (derivative of gymnázein to train in the nude
Origin of gymnasium2
1685–95; < German; special use of gymnasium 1
Explanation
A gymnasium is a place people go to exercise or participate in sports. Your neighborhood gymnasium might be a good place to play basketball, pump iron, or to check out the other gym rats. The more common gym is a shortened form of gymnasium. Most schools have a gymnasium, a room where physical education classes are held and games like dodge ball and volleyball can be played. People also belong to private gymnasiums, where they take yoga classes and run on treadmills and lift weights. In Latin, gymnasium means "school for gymnastics," from the Greek gymnasion, "public place where athletic exercises are practiced."
Vocabulary lists containing gymnasium
List 8
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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:
Inside the Villaviciosa de Odon gymnasium, volunteers tried to keep children occupied with games and colouring activities, while others distributed meals after the evacuees had spent their first night sleeping on cots.
From Barron's ● Jul. 25, 2026
During the 1950s and 1960s, the team reconstructed a monumental bath gymnasium complex and the largest synagogue in the ancient world.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 25, 2026
Nike, the shoe company, took over the campus recently re-making the gymnasium, cleaning all the banners hanging from the walls, putting up signs and using the auditorium to make it a shoe store.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 25, 2026
Twelve years before, during his 1988 presidential campaign, Jackson had packed 1,000 people into a Hazard, Kentucky, gymnasium and talked about the “false face of poverty” that had taken hold in American politics and media.
From Salon ● Feb. 19, 2026
The school no longer blamed me for destroying their gymnasium.
From "The Sea of Monsters" by Rick Riordan
They might serve as rigorous gymnasia for the political imagination.
From Slate ● Sep. 17, 2014
As recently as 2006, the state's prisons held twice as many prisoners as they were meant to house, and inmate bunks were stacked in gymnasia and day rooms along with regular cells.
From Reuters ● Oct. 15, 2013
There were Italian youth groups from Foggia and Viterbo and Gubbio and Como, a delegation from a Wiesbaden publishing house, some doctors from Canada, and alumni from two gymnasia in Berlin.
From Time Magazine Archive
Without interrupting his studies at Bowdoin, he supervised both the Yale and Bowdoin gymnasia for three years.
From Time Magazine Archive
In ancient Greece, physical exercises in schools were prescribed and regulated by law, and hence these schools were called gymnasia.
From A Treatise on Physiology and Hygiene For Educational Institutions and General Readers by Hutchison, Joseph Chrisman
Emergency shelters were set up in schools and gymnasiums in southwestern France for tourists and residents left wondering what they would return to.
From Barron's ● Jul. 25, 2026
What calls to mind phys ed and school gymnasiums more palpably than dodgeball?
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 20, 2024
Caucusing begins at 7 p.m. local time in school gymnasiums, community centers and churches as brutal cold and snow in Iowa could affect turnout.
From New York Times ● Jan. 15, 2024
"I remember that safety inspections were conducted on various gymnasiums after the Qiqihar No. 34 Middle School gymnasium collapsed in July," said a netizen on China's Weibo social media platform.
From Reuters ● Nov. 7, 2023
Still, a stream of refugees made their way to Yamagata, the prefecture west of Fukushima, where they would sleep on floors in crowded gymnasiums and municipal buildings.
From "Meltdown" by Deirdre Langeland
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.
