1
a
: motion picture
—usually used attributively
b
: a motion-picture theater
2
a
: movies
especially
: the film industry
b
: the art or technique of making motion pictures
Examples of cinema in a Sentence
a student of French cinema
We drove by the cinema to see what was playing.
Recent Examples on the Web
And third: Summit’s tendency to most often describe his life not in terms of music but cinema.
—
Katie Bain, Billboard, 6 Mar. 2025
But above all, the Luxembourg City Film Festival wants to celebrate cinema and provide some escapism for its audiences.
—Georg Szalai, The Hollywood Reporter, 6 Mar. 2025
In his feature debut, Joel Alfonso Vargas looks to the side of New York—and the New Yorkers—in which cinema has distressingly little interest to carve a thriller of quotidian tension.
—Samantha Bergeson, IndieWire, 5 Mar. 2025
The fruits of her labor provide a detailed history of Black culture and survival through cinema.
—Essence, 4 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for cinema
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Katie Bain, Billboard, 6 Mar. 2025
But above all, the Luxembourg City Film Festival wants to celebrate cinema and provide some escapism for its audiences.
—Georg Szalai, The Hollywood Reporter, 6 Mar. 2025
In his feature debut, Joel Alfonso Vargas looks to the side of New York—and the New Yorkers—in which cinema has distressingly little interest to carve a thriller of quotidian tension.
—Samantha Bergeson, IndieWire, 5 Mar. 2025
The fruits of her labor provide a detailed history of Black culture and survival through cinema.
—Essence, 4 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for cinema
Cite this Entry
“Cinema.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cinema. Accessed 12 Mar. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
cinema
noun
cin·e·ma
ˈsin-ə-mə 
1
a
: movie sense 2a
a cinema director
b
: a theater for showing movies
went to the cinema
2
a
: the business of making movies
worked in cinema
b
: the art or technique of making movies
a student of French cinema
cinematic
adjective
ˌsin-ə-ˈmat-ik
cinematically
adverb
-i-k(ə-)lē
Etymology
derived from French cinématographe "motion picture," from Greek kinēma "movement" and graphe "picture," from kinein "to move" — related to kinetic
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