theater

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A building, room, or outdoor structure for the presentation of plays, films, or other dramatic performances.
2. n. A room with tiers of seats used for lectures or demonstrations: an operating theater at a medical school.
3. n. Dramatic literature or its performance; drama: the theater of Shakespeare and Marlowe.
4. n. The milieu of actors and playwrights.
5. n. The quality or effectiveness of a theatrical production: good theater; awful theater.
6. n. Dramatic material or the use of such material: "His summation was a great piece of courtroom theater” ( Ron Rosenbaum).
7. n. The audience assembled for a dramatic performance.
8. n. A place that is the setting for dramatic events.
9. n. A large geographic area in which military operations are coordinated: the European theater during World War II.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A building appropriated to the representation of dramatic spectacles; a play-house. Among the Greeks and Romans theaters were among the most important and the largest public edifices, very commonly having accommodation for from 10,000 to 40,000) spectators. The Greek and Roman theaters resembled each other in their general distribution, the Roman theater being developed from the Greek with the modifications, particularly about the orchestra and the stage, due to the difference from the Greek of Roman dramatic ideals. The auditorium, including the orchestra, was commonly in general plan a segment of a circle, usually a half-circle in Roman examples, greater than a half-circle in Greek, and was not, unless very exceptionally, covered by a roof or awning. It was termed cavea by the Romans and κοῖλον by the Greeks. The seats were all concentric with the orchestra, and were intersected by diverging ascents or flights of steps, which divided the auditorium into wedge-shaped compartments (cunei, κερκίδες), and also by one longitudinal passage or more (see diazoma). The stage of the Roman theater formed the chord of the segment, and was called the scena (σκηνή). The Greek theater of the great dramatic period in the fifth century b. c. had no stage, the action taking place in the orchestra, or space below the seats, in which actors and chorus figured together, the orchestra proper being a circle in the center of which stood the thymele, or altar of Dionysus. The Romans appropriated the orchestra for the seats of the senators. The later Greek theaters had stages, at first wholly beyond the circle of the orchestra; but under the Roman domination in Greece the stage of nearly all the Greek theaters was moved forward until at list it occupied the position adopted by the Romans themselves. Besides these essential parts there were the λογει%26ον, proscenium, or pulpitum, the stage proper, and the postscenium, or structure behind the stage, in which parts the Greek and Roman theaters differed considerably. Almost all surviving Creek theaters were profoundly modified in Roman times, but the original disposition can still be followed in several, as those of Epidaurus and Sicyon. Scenery, in the modern sense of the word, was little employed, but the stage machinery became elaborate with the advance of time. In the early days of the modern theater the buildings were only partially roofed, and the stage but scantily if at all provided with scenery. The interior of the theaters of the present day is usually constructed on a horseshoe or semicircular plan, with several tiers of galleries round the walls. The stage has a slight downward slope from the back, and is furnished with movable scenes, which give an air of reality to the spectacle which was unsought in the ancient theater. See box, curtain, orchestra, parquet, pit, postscenium, proscenium, scene, stage, stall, thymele.
2. n. A room, hall, or other place, with a platform at one end, and ranks of seats rising stepwise as the tiers recede from the center, or otherwise so arranged that a body of spectators can have an unobstructed view of the platform. Places of this description are constructed for public lectures, academic exercises, anatomical demonstrations, surgical operations before a class, etc.: as, an operating theater.
3. n. A place rising by steps or gradations like the seats of a theater.
4. n. A place of action or exhibition; a field of operations; the locality or scene where a series of events takes place or may be observed; scene; seat: as, the theater of war.
5. n. The drama; the mass of dramatic literature; also, theatrical representation; the stage: as, a history of the French theater.
6. n. An amphitheater; hence, a circular reservoir or receptacle; a basin.

Wiktionary

1. n. A place or building, consisting of a stage and seating, in which an audience gathers to watch plays, musical performances, public ceremonies, and so on.
2. n. A region where a particular action takes place; a specific field of action, usually with reference to war.
3. n. A lecture theatre.
4. n. medicine An operating theatre or locale for human experimentation.
5. n. US A cinema.
6. n. Drama or performance as a profession or artform.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. An edifice in which dramatic performances or spectacles are exhibited for the amusement of spectators; anciently uncovered, except the stage, but in modern times roofed.
2. n. Any room adapted to the exhibition of any performances before an assembly, as public lectures, scholastic exercises, anatomical demonstrations, surgical operations, etc.
3. n. That which resembles a theater in form, use, or the like; a place rising by steps or gradations, like the seats of a theater.
4. n. obsolete A sphere or scheme of operation.
5. n. A place or region where great events are enacted.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a region in which active military operations are in progress
2. n. the art of writing and producing plays
3. n. a building where theatrical performances or motion-picture shows can be presented