also 5 achadomye, 6 achademya. [a. Fr. académie, ad. L. acadēmīa, a. Gr. ἀκαδημία, more properly ἀκαδήμεια adj., f. Ἀκάδημος name of a man; cf. Horace’s silvas Academi, the ‘groves of Academus.’]
1. Proper name of a garden near Athens where Plato taught.
1474. Caxton, The Chesse, 86. Plato … chose his mansion and dwellyng in achadomye.
1603. Holland, Plutarch, 275. The Academy, a little pingle or plot of ground, was the habitation of Plato.
1807. Robinson, Archæol. Græca, I. i. 12. It [the Academy] was a large enclosure of ground, which was once the property of a citizen of Athens named Academus…. Some, however, assert that it was called Academia from Echedemus, an Arcadian in the army of Castor and Pollux.
2. The philosophical school or system of Plato.
1677. Gale, Crt. of Gentiles, II. III. 132. From the Philosophers Scholes, specially from Plato’s Academie.
1751. Chambers, Cycl., s.v. The ancient academy doubted of everything, and went so far as to make it a doubt, whether or no they ought to doubt.
1871. Farrar, Witness of Hist., iii. 100. Without eloquence she silenced the subtle dialectics of the Academy.
3. A place where the arts and sciences are taught; an institution for the study of higher learning; in the general sense including a university, but in popular usage restricted to an educational institution claiming to hold a rank between a university or college and a school. In England the word has been abused, and is now in discredit in this sense.
1549. Compl. of Scotl. (1872), 13. Thir tua princis be chance entrit in the achademya, to heir ane lesson of philosophie.
c. 1588. Greene, Friar Bacon, ii. 37. Joying that our academy yields A man suppos’d the wonder of the world.
1758. Johnson, Idler, No. 33, ¶ 27. The fashionable academies of our metropolis.
1849. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., I. 532. He had been master of an academy which the Dissenters had set up at Islington.
1876. Grant, Burgh Schools Scotl., II. ii. 115. The oldest Academy in Scotland is that of Perth.
† b. fig. The arts, or circle of knowledge, taught in an academy, or a treatise comprehending them. Obs.
1636. Healey, trans. Theophrastus’ Char., 10. Whatsoever belongeth to the womens Academie, as paintings, preservings, needle-workes, and such-like.
a. 1667. Cowley, Elegy on Littleton, Wks. 1711, III. 50. He that had only talk’d with him, might find A little Academy in his Mind.
1675. A. Browne (title), Ars pictoria: or an Academy treating of Drawing, Painting, etc.
1754. H. Walpole, Lett. to H. Mann, 257 (1834), III. 74. That living academy of love-lore my Lady Vane.
4. Hence, a place of training.
1570. Sir H. Gilbert, Qu. Elizabethes Achademy, 12. Wherby your Maiesties and Successors courtes shalbe for euer … becomen a most noble Achademy of chiuallrie, pollicy and philosophie.
1677. R. Gilpin, Dæmon. Sacra (1867), 67. Evil company is sin’s nursery & Satan’s academy.
1761. Hume, Hist. Eng., II. xli. 425. The assemblies of the zealots in private houses which … had become so many academies of fanaticism.
1764. Polite Miscellany, 313. One of our great points was to keep them as much as possible from the conversation of the servants, and from loitering in that academy of vice and corruption the kitchen.
1847. L. Hunt, Men, Women, & Bks., II. xii. 310. The graces and good qualities which she retained … rendered her house a sort of academy of good breeding.
5. A place of training in some special art, as a Riding Academy, the Royal Military Academy, etc.
1734. trans. Rollin’s Anc. Hist., IV. x. 411. They called the places … Gymnasia, which answers very near to our academies.
1751. Chambers, Cycl., s.v., Academy is particularly understood of a riding-school.
1882. Daily News, 5 May, 2/1. The Professor of Chemistry and Physics at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich … The Officer who was placed in charge of the Academy.
6. A society or institution for the cultivation and promotion of literature, of arts and sciences, or of some particular art or science, as the French Academy, the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg, the Royal Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, which latter is commonly called in England ‘the Academy.’ Familiarly the name is extended to the Annual exhibition of the Society.
1691. Ray, Creation (1704), II. 390. Several Creatures dissected by the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris.
1769. Sir J. Reynolds, Disc. at Opening of Royal Academy. An Academy, in which the polite Arts may be regularly cultivated, is at last opened among us by Royal Munificence.
1858. Max Müller, Chips (1880), III. i. 34. After the model of the literary academies in Italy, academies were founded at the small courts of Germany.
1873. Black, Pr. of Thule (1875), xii. 190. We were at the Academy all the morning, and mamma is not a bit tired.
7. Attrib., as in Academy-board, Academy Dinner, Academy-figure, Academy Lectures, etc. An Academy-figure is usually drawn half-life-size in crayon or pencil from a nude model.
1769. Sir J. Reynolds, Disc., i. I have seen also Academy figures by Annibale Caracci … drawn with all the peculiarties of an individual model.
1859. Gullick & Timbs, Painting, 313. When a painter introduces a figure wanting in repose or in its parts inharmonious … it is at once called ‘Academic,’ or an ‘Academy Figure.’ Ibid., 217. Academy board is a thin millboard, on which most of the studies made at the Academy are painted.
