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''lyceum'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904120411-00-⌔
lyceum - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
lyceum (plural lyceums or lycea)
- (historical) A public hall designed for lectures, readings, or concerts.
- ✤ At a lyceum, not long since, I felt that the lecturer had chosen a theme too foreign to himself, and so failed to interest me as much as he might have done.1
- ✤ In the autumn he was to return home; his family - composed, as Rowland knew, of a father, who was a cashier in a bank, and five unmarried sisters, one of whom gave lyceum lectures on woman’s rights, the whole resident at Buffalo, N.Y. - had been writing him peremptory letters and appealing to him as son, brother and fellow-citizen.2
- (US, historical) A school, especially European, at a stage between elementary school and college, a lycée.
- ✤ We burst out laughing. She told me that one of her teachers at the “lyceum” used to say that whenever any of the students got up to anything.3
- An association for literary improvement.
Etymology
From Latin Lyceum, from Ancient Greek Λύκειον (Lúkeion) (the name of a gymnasium, or athletic training facility, near Athens where Aristotle established his school), from Λύκειος, from Proto-Greek ﹡λύκη), “light.” The meaning of the epithet “Lyceus” later became associated with Apollo’s mother Leto, who was the patron goddess of Lycia (Λυκία) and who was identified with the wolf (λύκος). Doublet of lycée and Lyceum.
Pronunciation
- IPA: /laɪˈsiːəm/
- Audio (Southern England): 🔊
Printed 2026-09-04.
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