university
university (ynə-vûrʹsĭ-tē) noun
Abbr. univ., Univ., U., U
1. An institution for higher learning with teaching and research facilities constituting a graduate school and professional schools that award master's degrees and doctorates and an undergraduate division that awards bachelor's degrees.
2. The buildings and grounds of such an institution.
3. The body of students and faculty of such an institution.
[Middle English universite, from Old French, from Medieval Latin ūniversitās, from Latin, the whole, a corporate body, from ūniversus, whole. See universe.]
Word History: The universe in the word university is not the universe as we know it, though university is derived from the ancestor of our word universe. This ancestor, Latin ūniversus, was made up of ūnus,"one," and versus,"in a specified direction."Ūniversus thus literally meant "in one specified direction" but actually meant "the whole of, entire," and "regarded as a whole, regarded as a group."Ūniversum, the neuter singular of ūniversus, used as a noun, meant "the universe," as did the derivative ūniversitās, which also meant "a corporate body of persons, community." During the Middle Ages, when Latin continued to be used in areas such as government, religion, and education, the word ūniversitās was applied to the new corporate bodies of teachers and students, as at Salerno, Paris, and Oxford, that were the ancestors of our universities of today. Our word university, going back to the Latin word, is first recorded around 1300, with reference to this corporate body.