Emily Dickinson Lexicon

ATH-E-NE'UM, n. [Gr. from Athens.]

In ancient Athens, a place where poets, philosophers, and rhetoricians declaimed, and repeated their compositions. In the United States, a building or an apartment where a library, periodicals, and newspapers are kept for public use, or for a reading room, so called. [Note. This word is anglicized, by discarding the diphthong, as is done in economy and other English words.]