| academy | |
| 1. n. (classical studies usually capitalized) The garden where Plato taught.Brown, Lesley, ed. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. 5th. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. | |
| 2. n. (classical studies usually capitalized) Plato's philosophical system based on skepticism; Plato's followers. | |
| 3. n. An institution for the study of higher learning; a college or a university; typically a private school. | |
| 4. n. A school or place of training in which some special art is taught. | |
| the military academy at West Point; a riding academy; the Academy of Music.; a music academy; a language academy | |
| 5. n. A society of learned people united for the advancement of the arts and sciences, and literature, or some particular art or science. | |
| the French Academy; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; academies of literature and philology. | |
| 6. n. (obsolete) The knowledge disseminated in an Academy. | |
| 7. n. (with the, without reference to any specific academy) Academia. | |
| 8. n. A body of established opinion in a particular field, regarded as authoritative. | |
| 9. n. (education) A school directly funded by central government, independent of local control. | |
