Other forms: exercises
Exercise is body movement you do on purpose to stay strong and healthy. Get some exercise, an exercise bike, do the exercises.
Physical activity is anything that moves you; exercise is the planned, structured kind, and the distinction matters in health advice. The recommendation is around a hundred and fifty minutes a week of moderate activity. An exercise is also a task set to practise a skill, and a military exercise is a training operation. Note exercise a right; and that the Latin means to keep busy.
1nounexercisePlanned body movement to stay strong and healthy.
“About a hundred and fifty minutes of exercise a week.”
2nountaskA task set to practise a skill.
“For homework, do the grammar exercises on page twelve.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
exercise is physical activity or a task.
Also accepted in games: workout
Latin exercitium comes from exercere, to keep busy — ex plus arcere, to keep in. It displaced the Old English plega, which survives as play.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂erk-
Latin
exercitium
Old French
exercise
Middle English
exercise
English, today
exercise
From Middle English exercise, from Old French exercise, from Latin exercitium. From Middle English exercise, from Old French exercise, from Latin exercitium. Displaced native Old English plega (“an exercise”) whence Modern English play.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA