German

Noun

Theater n ‎(genitive Theaters, plural Theater)

1. theater, theatre

Declension

English

Alternative forms

• theatre (standard spelling in all English-speaking countries except the USA)

Noun

theater ‎(plural theaters)

1. A place or building, consisting of a stage and seating, in which an audience gathers to watch plays, musical performances, public ceremonies, and so on.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Oscar Wilde:

     The theater is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, it is also the return of art to life.

2. A region where a particular action takes place; a specific field of action, usually with reference to war.

   His grandfather was in the Pacific theater during the war.

3. A lecture theatre.
4. (medicine) An operating theatre or locale for human experimentation.

   This man is about to die, get him into theater at once!

5. (US) A cinema.

   We sat in the back row of the theater and threw popcorn at the screen.

6. Drama or performance as a profession or artform.

   I worked in the theater for twenty-five years.

Usage notes

• The spelling theatre is the main spelling in British English, with theater being rare.
• In United States English, theater accounts for about 80 percent of usage in the major corpus of usage, COCA.
• Among American theatre professionals, there is some usage of the two spellings in order to differentiate between the location theater (as in definitions 1-5) and the art-form theatre (definition 6). A variant of this differentiation is the usage of theatre for things relating to live performances (as in definitions 1 and 6) with theater being used for all other uses.

Derived terms

• theater of war

Translations

See also

• Appendix:Glossary of theatre

Anagrams

• hat tree, hattree, teareth, tethera, theatre, thereat

Dutch

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /teˈjaːtər/
• Hyphenation: the‧a‧ter

Etymology

From Old French theatre, from Latin theatrum, from Ancient Greek θέατρον ‎(théatron, “a place for viewing”), from θεάομαι ‎(theáomai, “to see", "to watch", "to observe”).

Noun

theater n ‎(plural theaters, diminutive theatertje n)

1. theater (US), theatre (Commonwealth): either drama, the art form, or a drama theater (building)

Synonyms

• schouwburg