University

How to spell university

10 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce university

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does university mean?

1. nounA higher education institution that awards degrees and conducts research.

University in a sentence

• She applied to every university within commuting distance of her home.

• The local university offers evening courses for working adults.

Where does university come from?

Language of origin: Latin

University comes from the Latin universitas, which meant a whole, a totality, or a corporate body of people, and was built from universus, meaning 'turned into one' or 'combined into a whole', from unus 'one' and vertere 'to turn'. In medieval Latin the full phrase universitas magistrorum et scholarium described the entire community of teachers and students gathered in one place, and over time the shorter word came to mean the corporate institution itself. English took it up through Old French universite in the 1300s, when the earliest such bodies at places like Bologna, Paris and Oxford were taking shape. The same vertere root that gives the central -vers- also turns up in everyday relatives such as 'reverse', 'convert' and 'universe', all carrying the idea of turning. Because the spoken word swallows the middle vowels into a blur, the trap for writers is remembering the -ver- in the centre and the single -s- before the -ity ending.

How the word is built

• uni- (one, whole)
• vers (from vertere: to turn)
• -ity (noun suffix forming a state or institution)