Campuses

How to spell campuses

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce campuses

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does campuses mean?

1. nounThe grounds and buildings of more than one university, college, or large institution.

Campuses in a sentence

• The university operates three campuses across the region.

• Both campuses closed early because of the snowstorm.

Where does campuses come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the plural of campus, which comes straight from the Latin word campus, meaning 'open field' or 'level ground', the same sense that gave us military terms like 'campaign' (originally an open field where armies manoeuvred). The educational sense was born in America in the early eighteenth century, when Princeton used campus to describe the grounds of the college, the open green expanse around the buildings. From there it spread to other institutions and eventually to corporate and hospital sites as well. English forms the plural by adding -es because campus ends in an s sound, and that is the small trap: writers sometimes reach for the Latin-style plural 'campi', but in modern English the standard plural is simply campuses. The shared field meaning still links it to 'camp', another descendant of the same Latin root.

How the word is built

• campus (from Latin campus: open field, level ground)
• -es (plural suffix)