Gym

How to spell gym

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce gym

What does gym mean?

1. nounA building or room equipped for physical exercise and training.

Gym in a sentence

• She goes to the gym before work most mornings.

• The new gym on the high street offers a free trial week.

Where does gym come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is a clipped form of gymnasium, which English took from the Latin gymnasium, itself borrowed from the Greek gymnasion, meaning 'a place for athletic training'. The Greek root is gymnos, which literally meant 'naked', because in ancient Greece athletes trained and competed without clothing. Over time gymnasium came to mean any building or hall fitted out for physical exercise, and from the nineteenth century English speakers began trimming the long word down to the brisk, single-syllable 'gym'. The same gymnos root quietly survives in 'gymnastics' and in the botanical term 'gymnosperm', meaning a plant whose seeds are 'naked' rather than enclosed. The short spelling can trap writers because the soft g and the y, rather than an i, both feel unexpected for such a small, common word.

How the word is built

• gym (a shortening of gymnasium, from Greek gymnasion: a place for exercising)