theater
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: Theater
Contents
English[edit]
Alternative forms[edit]
- theatre (standard spelling in all English-speaking countries except the USA)
Etymology[edit]
From Middle English theater, theatre, from Old French theatre, from Latin theatrum, from Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, “a place for viewing”), from θεάομαι (theáomai, “to see", "to watch", "to observe”).
Pronunciation[edit]
Noun[edit]
theater (countable and uncountable, plural theaters)
- A place or building, consisting of a stage and seating, in which an audience gathers to watch plays, musical performances, public ceremonies, and so on.
- (Can we date this quote?) Oscar Wilde:
- The theater is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, it is also the return of art to life.
- (Can we date this quote?) Oscar Wilde:
- A region where a particular action takes place; a specific field of action, usually with reference to war.
- His grandfather was in the Pacific theater during the war.
- A lecture theatre.
- (medicine) An operating theatre or locale for human experimentation.
- This man is about to die, get him into theater at once!
- (US) A cinema.
- We sat in the back row of the theater and threw popcorn at the screen.
- Drama or performance as a profession or artform.
- I worked in the theater for twenty-five years.
Usage notes[edit]
- The spelling theatre is the main spelling in British English, with theater being rare.
- In United States English, theater accounts for about 80 percent of usage in the major corpus of usage, COCA.
- Among American theatre professionals, there is some usage of the two spellings in order to differentiate between the location theater (as in definitions 1-5) and the art-form theatre (definition 6). A variant of this differentiation is the usage of theatre for things relating to live performances (as in definitions 1 and 6) with theater being used for all other uses.
Derived terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
place or building
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lecture theatre
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medicine: operating theatre — see operating theatre
cinema — see cinema
drama or performance as a profession or artform
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked
See also[edit]
Anagrams[edit]
Dutch[edit]
Pronunciation[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From Old French theatre, from Latin theatrum, from Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, “a place for viewing”), from θεάομαι (theáomai, “to see", "to watch", "to observe”).
Noun[edit]
theater n (plural theaters, diminutive theatertje n)
- theater (US), theatre (Commonwealth): either drama, the art form, or a drama theater (building)
Synonyms[edit]
Categories:
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old French
- English terms derived from Latin
- English terms derived from Ancient Greek
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English countable nouns
- en:Medicine
- American English
- en:Art
- Dutch terms with IPA pronunciation
- Dutch terms with audio links
- Dutch terms derived from Old French
- Dutch terms derived from Latin
- Dutch terms derived from Ancient Greek
- Dutch lemmas
- Dutch nouns
- Dutch nouns with plural in -s
- nl:Drama
