Uni

How to spell uni

3 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce uni

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does uni mean?

1. nounAn informal term for a university, the institution of higher education or one's time studying there.

Uni in a sentence

• She moved to a different city to start uni in the autumn.

• He took a part-time job to help pay for uni.

Where does uni come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a casual shortening of 'university', a word that traces back to the Latin universitas, meaning 'the whole' or 'a community treated as one body'. That noun came from universus, literally 'turned into one', built from unus 'one' and versus, the past participle of vertere 'to turn'. Medieval Latin used universitas for any incorporated group of people, and it narrowed to a guild of teachers and students, which is the modern sense English inherited through Old French in the 1300s. The clipped form 'uni' is far more recent, an informal British and Australian colloquialism that became widespread in the twentieth century, much as 'telly' trimmed 'television'. Because it simply lops off the rest of the longer word, the spelling holds no real trap; the only thing to remember is the single final 'i' rather than a 'y' or a doubled letter.

How the word is built

• uni- (clipped from university, ultimately Latin universus: whole, entire)