semester

Other forms: semesters

A semester is half of a school year. In September of your first year of high school, you could describe yourself as "a first-semester freshman."

The noun semester comes up often when you're in high school and college. It's an easy way to divide the school year, into two equal halves, or semesters. Sometimes a class lasts for the whole year, and sometimes for just one semester. Occasionally schools split the year into three trimesters just to make things interesting. Originally, semester meant "six months," from the Latin root of the same meaning, semestris.