Other forms: seminaries
A seminary is a college that trains priests or ministers. Enter the seminary, a Catholic seminary, leave the seminary.
It is a residential training rather than an ordinary degree, and it covers conduct and prayer as well as study. The Latin behind it is a seed bed, which is what the church took itself to be planting.
1nounseminaryA college that trains priests or ministers.
“He spent six years in a seminary before deciding against ordination.”
seminary is a college.
Latin seminarium means a seed bed, from semen, seed; the same root gives seminar.
Proto-Indo-European
*seh₁-
Latin
sēminārium
English, today
seminary
Built from
From Latin sēminārium, from sēmen (“seed”). Compare seminar. In the ground sense, from Middle English semynair, semynary.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA