museum
Americannoun
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A museum is a place where interesting objects are displayed — like paintings, historical documents, and dinosaur skeletons.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:
Officers also gave Jaxon, who is "obsessed" with the police, tickets to the force's police museum.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
"And I said, 'Japanese people would buy, Japanese people would go to the museum and things. I can do that, I can maybe promote it for this city'."
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
Roh, 65, has three children with Chey and has built a career in the cultural space, running a digital art museum.
From Barron's ● Jul. 24, 2026
Roh operates the Art Center Nabi, South Korea’s first media-art museum, which had occupied a floor of SK’s downtown headquarters.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
Besides, I’m supposed to be taking notes on the museum.
From "The Manifestor Prophecy" by Angie Thomas
In other words, AI is unable to treat evidence — or people — equally with context and knowledge of how that evidence relates to the inequities built into museums and image archives themselves.
From Salon ● Jul. 28, 2026
Over the next two years, it is hoped that more than 1.2 million specimen records from 23 museums and herbaria will be added to a central England hub.
From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2026
Security issues at the Louvre had been pushed to the background in recent years, a parliamentary commission on the security of museums in France said in mid-May.
From Barron's ● Jul. 20, 2026
Their models were built from fossils preserved in natural history museums around the world.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 20, 2026
Before Owen, museums were designed primarily for the use and edification of the elite, and even then it was difficult to gain access.
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
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.
