sekolah menengah atas

Compound of sekolah menengah (“high school (US), secondary school (UK)”) +‎ atas (“high”), from

• Calque from English upper +‎ secondary school, or
• Calque from Japanese 高等 (kōtō, “higher”) +‎ 中学校 (chūgakkō, “secondary (middle) school”). The post-war Japanese term is 高等学校 (kōtōgakkō). Doublet of sekolah menengah tinggi.
• Calque from Chinese 高級中學／高级中学 (gāojí zhōngxué, “senior high school”).

• (Standard Indonesian) IPA^(key): /səˌkolah ˌmənəŋah ˈatas/ [səˌko.lah ˌmə.nə.ŋah ˈa.t̪as]
• Rhymes: -atas
• Syllabification: se‧ko‧lah me‧ne‧ngah a‧tas

sekolah menengah atas

1. (education) senior high school (US), upper secondary school (UK), abbreviated as SMA.

   Synonyms: (dated) sekolah lanjutan tingkat atas; (dated) sekolah menengah tinggi; (dated) sekolah menengah umum; (dated) sekolah menengah umum atas

This term was used from 1950 to 1961 and from 1968 to 1993 for general upper secondary education. Other similar terms are sekolah menengah tinggi (1942-1946), sekolah menengah umum atas (1946-1950), sekolah lanjutan tingkat atas (1963-1967) and sekolah menengah umum (1994-2004). This term has been in use since 2004 until today.

• “sekolah menengah atas” in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia, Jakarta: Agency for Language Development and Cultivation – Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia, 2016.