# stadium

> English word · Noun · IPA /ˈsteɪ.di.əm/ · frequency rank #2,369

## Definitions
1. A venue where sporting events are held.
2. An Ancient Greek racecourse, especially, the Olympic course for foot races.
3. Synonym of stadion, a Greek unit of length equivalent to about 185 m.
4. A kind of telemeter for measuring the distance of an object of known dimensions, by observing the angle it subtends.
5. A graduated rod used to measure the distance of the place where it stands from an instrument having a telescope, by observing the number of the graduations of the rod that are seen between certain parallel wires (stadia wires) in the field of view of the telescope.
6. A life stage of an organism.

## Etymology
From Latin stadium (“a measure of length, a race course”) (commonly one-eighth of a Roman mile; translated in early English Bibles by furlong), from Ancient Greek στάδιον (stádion, “a measure of length, a running track”), especially the track at Olympia, which was one stadium in length. The Greek word may literally mean "fixed standard of length" (from στάδιος (stádios, “firm, fixed”), from Proto-Indo-European *steh₂-, whence also stand and Latin stare). Doublet of stade, stadion, and estadio.

## Easily confused with
- **sodium** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sodium-vs-stadium)
- **stadia** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/stadia-vs-stadium)
- **sadism** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sadism-vs-stadium)

## Common misspellings (10)
`satdium`, `sstadium`, `staddium`, `stadimu`, `stadiumm`, `staduim`, `staidum`, `stdaium`, `sttadium`, `tsadium`

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/stadium