Sport & ContestGreek → English
Gym
/dʒɪm/noun
A room or building fitted out for exercise.
The Greek roots
γυμνός
gymnós
naked, unarmoured
Literally: “the naked place”
Follow a root:γυμνός3 words
The story of the word
A clipping of gymnasium, first recorded in the 1870s as school slang, from γυμνάσιον, the place where you trained with nothing on. The ancient version was a walled park with a running track, baths and shade, and it doubled as the town's intellectual centre; Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum were both gymnasia before they were schools of thought. German and Greek kept the building for education and put the athletics elsewhere, so a Gymnasium there is where you sit exams.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1871
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
gymnasiumgymnasticsgymnosperm
In a sentence
He joined the gym in January like everyone else and unlike everyone else still goes.