Kindergarten
nounA class or school for young children, typically those aged four to six, that prepares them for formal education.
How to spell kindergarten
12 letters · 4 syllables
How to pronounce kindergarten
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does kindergarten mean?
- nounA class or school for young children, typically those aged four to six, that prepares them for formal education.
Kindergarten in a sentence
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Her youngest son starts kindergarten in September.
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The local kindergarten teaches counting and letters through play.
Where does kindergarten come from?
Language of origin: Other
This word was borrowed wholesale from German in the middle of the nineteenth century, and it literally means 'children's garden', from kinder, the plural of kind 'child', and garten 'garden'. The image was deliberate: the German educator Friedrich Froebel, who founded the first such school in the 1830s, pictured young children as plants to be nurtured and allowed to grow. English speakers adopted both the institution and its German name, which is why the ending is spelled 'garten' rather than the English 'garden'. That foreign spelling is precisely the trap, because the word sounds as though it should end like the everyday word garden. The related German kind survives in English chiefly through this borrowing and through the loanword kindergarten itself, and the spelling has stayed faithful to its German origin ever since.
How the word is built
- kinder (German: children)
- garten (German: garden)
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