collegiate

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English collegiat,^[2][3] borrowed from Latin collēgiātus,^[4][5][3][6] formed from collēgium (“community, society, guild”) and the suffix -ātus.^[4][7] In classical Latin collēgiātus was a noun, a member of a college or corporation; in post-classical Latin it also meant a prison warder (before 636, in Isidore) and a scholarship holder (1483), and as an adjective it meant constituted as a college (before 1213) and attached to an academic institution (from 1433 in British sources).^[4] The American Heritage Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of English call the source Late Latin,^[3][8] Merriam-Webster Medieval Latin.^[7] Collēgium comes from collēga (“partner in office”), from com- (“with, together”) and legō (“to choose”).^[5] The OED compares Anglo-Norman collegiate (1337), Old Occitan collegiada (1363), Italian collegiato, Spanish colegiado and Portuguese colegiado (1431), all used of a church, and German Kollegiat, a member of a college (1500).^[4] The verb, recorded from 1654, was formed in English from the adjective.^[4][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Constituted as a college, in early use of a church with a body of clergy: 1446, in a document listing five grammar schools, one of them in the collegiate church of Saint Martin.^[4][2] In 1449 Metham used it of gods assembled together.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

The word followed the senses of college: first a corporate body, especially of clergy, then an academic college.^[4][5] The sense "of or belonging to a college or university" is recorded from 1566,^[4] and Johnson (1755) gave both "instituted after the manner of a college" and the collegiate church, one where a number of priests lived together near a cathedral.^[10] As a noun it meant a fellow member of a college or a colleague from 1583 and a member or student of a college from 1585,^[4] now chiefly in the United States.^[4] Because a prison could ironically be called a college, a prisoner was a collegiate in 17th- and 18th-century slang: the OED dates this from 1671,^[4] Green's Dictionary of Slang from 1660, and the canting dictionary of about 1698 also used it for shopkeepers at the Royal Exchange.^[11][4] In the 19th century the word was applied to universities made up of separate colleges (1817), and in North America to textbooks and dictionaries for college students (1831); a collegiate alone came to mean such a desk dictionary (1898).^[4] In Canada a collegiate, short for collegiate institute, is a secondary school in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.^[12][13]

Timeline

• 1446 – constituted as a college; of a collegiate church.^[4][2]
• 1449 – acting together as a body; associated.^[4][2]
• 1566 – of or relating to a college or university.^[4]
• 1583 – noun, a fellow member of a college; a colleague.^[4]
• 1585 – noun, a member or student of a college.^[4]
• 1654 – verb, to make collegiate, especially to make a church into a collegiate church.^[4]
• 1660 – slang, a prisoner.^[11]
• 1699 – slang, a shopkeeper at the Royal Exchange (obsolete by 1785).^[4][11]
• 1817 – of a university made up of separate colleges.^[4]
• 1831 – in North America, of books designed for college students.^[4]
• 1898 – noun, the collegiate edition of a dictionary.^[4]
• 1905 – in North America, of clothes or looks typical of college students.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of or relating to a college or its students: She rowed in collegiate races for four years.^[14][7][13]
2. Of a university, made up of separate colleges.^[14][7][4]
3. Of or relating to a collegiate church.^[7][4]
4. Marked by authority shared equally among colleagues; collegial.^[7][4]
5. (North America) Of books, designed for college students.^[4]

Noun

1. A college student; a collegian.^[7][4]
2. (Canada) A secondary school, short for collegiate institute.^{[14][13][12][7]}
3. (historical, slang) A prisoner.^[4][11]

Verb

1. To make into a college or a collegiate church.^[7][4][9]

Word family

• collegiately
• collegiateness
• intercollegiate
• noncollegiate
• postcollegiate
• precollegiate
• pseudocollegiate
• subcollegiate

Related words

• college
• colleague
• collegial
• collegian
• collegium

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b c d Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
12. ^ a b Dollinger, Stefan, ed., A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, 3rd ed. (online), Vancouver: University of British Columbia, dchp.arts.ubc.ca
13. ^ a b c Barber, Katherine, ed. (2004), The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, 2nd ed., Toronto: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins