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Theater vs Stadium - What's the difference?

theater | stadium |

As nouns the difference between theater and stadium

is that theater is theater, theatre while stadium is stage (rfgloss).

theater

English

Alternative forms

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

Noun

(en noun)
  • 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.
  • * (rfdate) :
  • The theater is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, it is also the return of art to life.
  • 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.
  • A lecture theatre.
  • (medicine) An operating theatre or locale for human experimentation.
  • This man is about to die, get him into theater at once!
  • (US) A cinema.
  • We sat in the back row of the theater and threw popcorn at the screen.
  • 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.

    See also

    *

    Anagrams

    * ----

    stadium

    Noun

    (en-noun)
  • A venue where sporting events are held.
  • * 2013 June 18, (Simon Romero), " Protests Widen as Brazilians Chide Leaders," New York Times (retrieved 21 June 2013):
  • In a convulsion that has caught many in Brazil and beyond by surprise, waves of protesters denounced their leaders for dedicating so many resources to cultivating Brazil’s global image by building stadiums for international events, when basic services like education and health care remain woefully inadequate.
  • An ancient Greek race course, especially, the Olympic course for foot races.
  • A Greek measure of length, being the chief one used for itinerary distances, also adopted by the Romans for nautical and astronomical measurements, equal to 600 Greek or 625 Roman feet, or 125 Roman paces, or to 606 feet, 9 inches.
  • * , II.ii.3:
  • Dionysiodorussent a letter ad superos after he was dead, from the centre of the earth, to signify what distance the same centre was from the superficies of the same, viz. 42,000 stadiums  […].
  • A kind of telemeter for measuring the distance of an object of known dimensions, by observing the angle it subtends.
  • In surveying, a graduated rod used to measure the distance of the place where it stands from an instrument having a telescope, by observing the number of the graduations of the rod that are seen between certain parallel wires (stadia wires) in the field of view of the telescope.
  • Usage notes

    * The alternative plural stadia is occasionally used, chiefly in high-register contexts.

    Synonyms

    * (venue where sporting events are held) arena * (Greek unit of length) Olympic stadium * (graduated rod in surveying) stadia, stadia rod

    Derived terms

    * stadia rod * stadia wire