campus
noun · verb
Simple meaning
The land and buildings of a school, business, or hospital
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kampuhsSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈkæmpəs
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The grounds or property of a school, college, university, business, church, or hospital, often understood to include buildings and other structures.
An institution of higher education and its ambiance.
verb
To confine (a student) to campus as a punishment.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The grounds or property of a school, college, university, business, church, or hospital, often understood to include buildings and other structures.
Used this way, campus is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a religious use: it carries the weight of tradition and ceremony.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Religion/spirituality
- Historical writing
- Business/professional
- Education/classroom
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use campus
- “The university campus has many beautiful old buildings and green spaces.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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Words can change meaning depending on context.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.