Museum

//mjuːˈziːəm// noun, verb, slang

noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A building or institution dedicated to the acquisition, conservation, study, exhibition, and educational interpretation of objects having scientific, historical, cultural or artistic value.

    "visit the history museum"

  2. 2
    a depository for collecting and displaying objects having scientific or historical or artistic value wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    To place in a museum. ambitransitive

    "I use daily those books that for others are museumed. The glass case approach depresses me, makes books into porcelain, guts them of what they are."

  2. 2
    To visit museums. colloquial, intransitive

    "I told her I'd do just one visit to start; I don't really have time to do a lot of museuming."

Synonyms

All synonyms
anaanthologyaquariumarchivesart gallerybank

Example

More examples

"When was it that you visited the museum?"

Etymology

From Latin mūsēum (“library, study”), from Ancient Greek Μουσεῖον (Mouseîon), shrine of the Muses (Μοῦσα (Moûsa)).

Related phrases

dime museumimaginary museumliving museummuseum beetlemuseum pestmuseum piecemuseum problemmuseum restorationmuseum-goermuseumed outopen air museumopen-air museum

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.