kindergarten
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of kindergarten
1850–55; < German: literally, children's garden, equivalent to Kinder children ( see kind 2) + Garten garden
Explanation
Kindergarten is where children are introduced to school; it's where five year old children learn all about their ABC's and choice time. Kindergarten comes from the German words Kinder ("children") and Garten ("garden"). A garden of children is a lovely and poetic image for a classroom full of antsy kids trying their hardest to master basic skills and ideas through creative and interactive lessons. But perhaps that is just how they were seen by the 19th-century German educator Friedrich Fröbel, who is credited with inventing kindergarten, his "method of developing intelligence in young children."
Vocabulary lists containing kindergarten
August Words
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Words Derived from German
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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.
But many services, like teaching a kindergarten class, change little over time.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 18, 2026
How a kindergarten teacher became the accidental guardian of 200 king penguins.
From MarketWatch • May 15, 2026
In a two-storey flagship laboratory in one of the many new business hubs in Chongqing, a group of kindergarten children cackle with delight as they watch a robot fish swim around the tank.
From BBC • May 12, 2026
I went to public schools from kindergarten through the U.S.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 26, 2026
“Way back, that first day of kindergarten when you and I said to each other, ‘You’re just a whatnot’—you knew even then that not all the other whatnots besides you were robots?”
From "The School for Whatnots" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
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.
