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theatre

nouncommon in dialogue

A cinema; movie theatre.

noun

  1. 1

    rareA cinema; movie theatre.

  2. 2

    Variant of theaterAlternative spelling of theater.

    Mother[…]considered that the exclusiveness of Peter's circle was due not to its distinction, but to the fact that it was an inner Babylon of prodigality and whoredom, from which every Kensingtonian held aloof, except on the conventional tip-and-run excursions in pursuit of shopping, tea and theatres.

    City's players and supporters travelled from one end of the emotional scale to the other in those vital seconds, providing a truly remarkable piece of football theatre and the most dramatic conclusion to a season in Premier League history.

    But the picture was different elsewhere - Theatre Royal Windsor recorded full houses, although the managing director stated that the actors had trouble getting to and from the theatre.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dʰeyh₂-der. Ancient Greek θεάομαι (theáomai) Proto-Indo-European *-tḗr Proto-Indo-European *-trom Proto-Hellenic *-tron Ancient Greek -τρον (-tron) Ancient Greek θέᾱτρον (théātron)der. Latin theātrumbor. Old French teatrebor. Middle English theater, theatre English theatre From Middle English theater, theatre, from Old French theatre, from Latin theatrum, from Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, “a place for viewing”), from θεάομαι (theáomai, “to see, watch, observe”).

Forms

plural
theatres
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).