academia
UK /ˌæk.əˈdiː.mɪ.ə/ · US /ˌæk.əˈdi.mi.ə/ noun
- noun (collective) The scientific and cultural community engaged in higher education and research, taken as a whole. “Academia continues to provide scientific education, despite attempts to turn it into a system of professional schooling.”
- noun Continuous study at higher education institutions; scholarship. “Not every university graduate wishes to pursue academia.”
Synonyms
Etymology
Borrowed from New Latin acadēmīa, from Ancient Greek Ἀκαδημία (Akadēmía), a grove of trees and gymnasium outside of Athens where Plato taught; from the name of the supposed former owner of that estate, the Attica hero Akademos. Doublet of academe, academy, and Akademeia. Modern sense of “the world of universities and scholarship” recorded from 1956.
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “academia”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details