Stadium

//ˈsteɪ.di.əm// noun

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A venue where sporting events are held.

    "He is going for a cricket match at the stadium."

  2. 2
    a large structure for open-air sports or entertainments wordnet
  3. 3
    An Ancient Greek racecourse, especially, the Olympic course for foot races.
  4. 4
    Synonym of stadion, a Greek unit of length equivalent to about 185 m. historical

    "Dionysiodorus[…]sent a letter ad superos after he was dead, from the centre of the earth, to signify what distance the same centre was from the superficies of the same, viz. 42,000 stadiums […]."

  5. 5
    A kind of telemeter for measuring the distance of an object of known dimensions, by observing the angle it subtends.
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  1. 6
    A graduated rod used to measure the distance of the place where it stands from an instrument having a telescope, by observing the number of the graduations of the rod that are seen between certain parallel wires (stadia wires) in the field of view of the telescope.
  2. 7
    A life stage of an organism.

Etymology

From Latin stadium (“a measure of length, a race course”) (commonly one-eighth of a Roman mile; translated in early English Bibles by furlong), from Ancient Greek στάδιον (stádion, “a measure of length, a running track”), especially the track at Olympia, which was one stadium in length. The Greek word may literally mean "fixed standard of length" (from στάδιος (stádios, “firm, fixed”), from Proto-Indo-European *steh₂-, whence also stand and Latin stare). Doublet of stade, stadion, and estadio.

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