ACADEMY

• With the: the academic community, higher education, a society of artists and/or scholars.
• A secondary, college-preparatory, or military school; an institution ranked between a college or university and a school.
• The Academy: Plato’s school, the followers of Plato, or their philosophy.

From Greek

Akademeia (Akademia), a gymnasium near Athens where Plato and his associates talked, later divided into the old, middle and newer Academy. The place was named after the obscure Attic hero Akademus.

"Groves of Academe" comes to us from Horace:

inter silvas Academi quaerere verum, Epistles 2.2.45.

*

John Robinson, Archaeologia Graeca (1807):

Academy ... was a large enclosure of ground which was once the property of a citizen of Athens named Academus. Some however say that it received its name from an ancient hero. [OED]

Return to WORDS