stadium

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A venue where sporting events are held.

   He is going for a cricket match at the stadium.

2. 2
   noun

   Synonym of stadion, a Greek unit of length equivalent to about 185 m.

   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 […].

3. 3
   noun

   a large structure for open-air sports or entertainments

4. 4
   noun

   An Ancient Greek racecourse, especially, the Olympic course for foot races.

5. 5
   noun

   A kind of telemeter for measuring the distance of an object of known dimensions, by observing the angle it subtends.

6. 6
   noun

   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.

7. 7
   noun

   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. Displaced native Old English spyrd.