palaestra

• palæstra
• palaistra
• palestra (US)

From Middle French palestre, from Old French, from Latin palaestra, from Ancient Greek παλαίστρα (palaístra, “wrestling school”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /pəˈliːstɹə/, /pəˈlʌɪstɹə/

palaestra (plural palaestras or palaestrae)

1. (historical) A public area in ancient Greece and Rome dedicated to the teaching and practice of wrestling and other sports; a wrestling school, a gymnasium. [from 15th c.]
   • 1990, Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae:

     Athenian culture flourished in externalities, the open air of the agora and the nudity of the palestra.

2. An arena for literal or figurative combat; a battlefield. [from 15th c.]

• sarapatel

Borrowed from Ancient Greek παλαίστρα (palaístra, “wrestling school”).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [paˈɫae̯s.tra]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [paˈlɛs.t̪ra]

palaestra f (genitive palaestrae); first declension

1. wrestling school, palaestra; place of exercise; gymnasium
2. wrestling
3. (figuratively) rhetorical exercises; school of rhetoric, school
4. (figuratively) art, skill; dexterity
5. (figuratively, in the language of comedy) brothel

First-declension noun.

• (wrestling school): oleum

• “palaestra”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “palaestra”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "palaestra", in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• palaestra in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “palaestra”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “palaestra”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin