Meaning

noun the body of faculty and students at a university

noun establishment where a seat of higher learning is housed, including administrative and living quarters as well as facilities for research and teaching

noun a large and diverse institution of higher learning created to educate for life and for a profession and to grant degrees

originFrom Middle English universite (“institution of higher learning, body of persons constituting a university”) from Anglo-Norman université, from Old French universitei, from Medieval Latin stem of universitas, in juridical and Late Latin "a number of persons associated into one body, a society, company, community, guild, corporation, etc"; in Latin, "the whole, aggregate," from universus (“whole,…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0