Collegiate

How to spell collegiate

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce collegiate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does collegiate mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to a college or university, or to its students and activities.

Collegiate in a sentence

• He played collegiate basketball before turning professional.

• The town has a lively collegiate atmosphere during term time.

Where does collegiate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin collegiatus, meaning a member of a college or guild, which was built on collegium, a body of colleagues or an association of people sharing a common purpose. That noun in turn grew from collega, a 'partner in office', formed from com- meaning 'together' and a root tied to legare, 'to choose' or 'to appoint', so a college was originally a group of people chosen to work side by side. English adopted the word in the fifteenth century, at first describing anything belonging to a collegium, and it later settled into its modern academic sense relating to colleges, universities and their students. The same collegium root sits inside everyday words like 'colleague' and 'college', which is a useful memory hook: keep the double 'l' and the 'eg' from college, then add '-iate'. The trap in spelling lies in the unstressed ending, where the '-giate' is pronounced as a light 'jit' yet must be written out in full.

How the word is built

• col- (from collega: colleague, fellow member)
• leg (from legare: to choose, appoint)
• -ate (adjective suffix)