Other forms: cinemas
A cinema is the place with a large screen where films are shown. Go to the cinema, the local cinema, a cinema ticket.
This is the British word; American English says movie theater or, informally, the movies. Cinema is also the art form as a whole: French cinema, the history of cinema — where it is uncountable and slightly serious. Note multiplex; picture house, which is the old British term; and that cinematic describes anything with the visual sweep of film, including things that are not films.
1nouncinemaA place where films are shown on a large screen.
“The cinema closed in about 2003 and is now a gym.”
synonyms: movie theater, movies
2nounartFilm as an art form.
“He wrote about cinema for about thirty years.”
cinema is a place or art form.
Also accepted in games: movie theater, movies
Greek kinema means movement, from kinein, to move — the same root as kinetic. Cinematograph was the full name of the early machine, and both English and French cut it down, each keeping a different half.
French
cinéma
English, today
cinema
Built from
Borrowed from French cinéma. French cinéma, clipping of cinématographe (term coined by the Lumière brothers in the 1890s), from Ancient Greek κίνημα (“movement”) + γράφω (“write, record”). Compare German Kino (“cinema”), ultimately from the same Greek source.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA