Campus Means Field, and Princeton Used It First

A campus is the grounds and buildings of a university or institution. The usage is American and datable: Princeton applied the Latin *campus*, field, to its grounds in the 1770s, distinguishing the open American college from the enclosed courts and quadrangles of Oxford and Cambridge. The word spread across the world with the model.

• University grounds. *On campus.*
• A company's site. *A corporate campus.*
• Campus as a modifier. *Campus security.*

Word forms

How it is used in a sentence

• She lives on campus.No article, like *at home*.
• The company built a new campus.Corporate use.
• Oxford has quadrangles, not a campus.A different architectural tradition.

Words from *campus*, field

• Camp — a field encampment
• Campaign — originally a military operation in open country
• Champion — through Italian, one who fights in the field
• Champagne — the region, meaning open country
• Encamp — to settle in a field

From Latin *campus*, a field or plain — the same word as the Campus Martius in Rome. Princeton's use in the 1770s launched the modern sense.