Coliseum

How to spell coliseum

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce coliseum

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does coliseum mean?

1. nounA large building or stadium used for sports, concerts, or other public events.

Coliseum in a sentence

• The band sold out the downtown coliseum in under an hour.

• The city built a new coliseum to host basketball games and trade shows.

Where does coliseum come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word goes back to the Greek kolossos, which meant a huge statue or giant figure, a term famously applied to the Colossus of Rhodes. The Romans borrowed it as colossus and built the adjective colosseus, meaning 'gigantic'. The great amphitheatre completed in Rome around AD 80 came to be called the Colosseum, most likely because a colossal bronze statue of the emperor Nero once stood beside it. Over the centuries the name softened in spelling to 'coliseum' and was adopted as a generic English term for any large stadium or entertainment arena, a use that became especially common in the United States. The single 'l' and the 's-e-u-m' ending are the usual spelling traps, since they pull against the Latinate look of the original Colosseum.

How the word is built

• coloss- (from Greek kolossos: giant statue)
• -eum (Latin place/building suffix)