Seminary

How to spell seminary

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce seminary

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does seminary mean?

1. nounA college or institution that trains people for the priesthood or ministry.

Seminary in a sentence

• After graduating, he entered the seminary to train for the priesthood.

• The diocese funds a small seminary where future priests study theology.

Where does seminary come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin seminarium, which literally meant a 'seed plot' or 'nursery garden', the patch of ground where young plants were raised before being transplanted. That noun was built on semen, the ordinary Latin word for 'seed', the same root that gives English 'semen' and 'disseminate' (to scatter seed widely). By the 1500s the figurative idea of a place where things are nurtured and grown was applied to institutions that trained young men, and the word came into English meaning a place that cultivates and educates. After the Council of Trent in the mid 1500s it settled firmly into its modern sense of a college for training priests and clergy, picturing students as seedlings raised for ministry. Remembering the 'seed' root explains the spelling: it is semin-ary, with the same first syllables as 'seminar', not 'semen-ery'.

How the word is built

• semin- (from semen: seed)
• -ary (noun suffix: a place for)