Word.ws English Dictionary

public schools

public schools is the plural of public school.

Meaning of public school

Noun

public school (plural public schools)

  1. (India, Ireland, UK) Certain private schools, particularly (initially) any grammar school operated apart from the personal lands of its students or (from the 19th century) the feepaying secondary schools which developed from or were modelled upon them; a British boarding school.
    • All such School-masters as have charge of Children and do instruct them either in Publick Schools, or Private Houses.1580 June 18, Letters of the Privy Council in John Strype's History of Edmund Grindal (1710), ii.xi.254
  2. (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, US) A publicly funded and administered school; (UK, Ireland) such schools in the context of other countries.
    • The Court voted for the erecting a Publick Schooll or Colledge in Cambridge.1636, Harvard College Records, published 1925, I.171
  3. (obsolete) A college or university.
    • Thither [to Douai] he went, where after a yeres great diligence and many excercises done booth in house and publike scholes, he proceded bachilier of diuinitie [bachelor of divinity].1582, W. Allen, Briefe Hist. Glorious Martyrdom, sig. d3

Questions about public schools

What is public schools the plural of?
Public schools is the plural of public school.

Words near public schools in the dictionary

  1. public relations
  2. public rhetoric
  3. public safety announcement
  4. public safety announcements
  5. public school
  6. public schools
  7. public sector
  8. public sectors
  9. public servant
  10. public servants
  11. public service

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: public schools (page history and authors); public school (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “public schools.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/public_schools. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.