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Meaning of UNIVERSITY

Pronunciation:  `yoonu'vursitee

WordNet Dictionary
 
 Definition: 
  1. [n]  establishment where a seat of higher learning is housed, including administrative and living quarters as well as facilities for research and teaching
  2. [n]  the body of faculty and students at a university
  3. [n]  a large and diverse institution of higher learning created to educate for life and for a profession and to grant degrees
 
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 See Also: academe, academia, body, Cambridge, Cambridge University, Carnegie-Mellon University, city university, college, Cooper Union, Cornell University, educational institution, establishment, graduate school, Harvard, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, multiversity, Open University, Oxbridge, Oxford, Oxford University, Paris University, Princeton, Princeton University, redbrick university, Sorbonne, Stanford, Stanford University, University of Chicago, University of Paris, varsity, Yale, Yale university

 

 

Webster's 1913 Dictionary
 
 Definition: 
\U`ni*ver"si*ty\, n.; pl. {Universities}. [OE.
universite, L. universitas all together, the whole, the
universe, a number of persons associated into one body, a
society, corporation, fr. universus all together, universal:
cf. F. universit['e]. See {Universe}.]
1. The universe; the whole. [Obs.] --Dr. H. More.
2. An association, society, guild, or corporation, esp. one
   capable of having and acquiring property. [Obs.]
         The universities, or corporate bodies, at Rome were
         very numerous. There were corporations of bakers,
         farmers of the revenue, scribes, and others. --Eng.
                                               Cyc.
3. An institution organized and incorporated for the purpose
   of imparting instruction, examining students, and
   otherwise promoting education in the higher branches of
   literature, science, art, etc., empowered to confer
   degrees in the several arts and faculties, as in theology,
   law, medicine, music, etc. A university may exist without
   having any college connected with it, or it may consist of
   but one college, or it may comprise an assemblage of
   colleges established in any place, with professors for
   instructing students in the sciences and other branches of
   learning.
         The present universities of Europe were, originally,
         the greater part of them, ecclesiastical
         corporations, instituted for the education of
         churchmen . . . What was taught in the greater part
         of those universities was suitable to the end of
         their institutions, either theology or something
         that was merely preparatory to theology. --A. Smith.
Note: From the Roman words universitas, collegium, corpus,
      are derived the terms university, college, and
      corporation, of modern languages; and though these
      words have obtained modified significations in modern
      times, so as to be indifferently applicable to the same
      things, they all agree in retaining the fundamental
      signification of the terms, whatever may have been
      added to them. There is now no university, college, or
      corporation, which is not a juristical person in the
      sense above explained [see def. 2, above]; wherever
      these words are applied to any association of persons
      not stamped with this mark, it is an abuse of terms.
      --Eng. Cyc.
 

 

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