Academic term
portion of a school year ending with grade assignments
An academic term (or simply term) is a portion of an academic year during which an educational institution holds classes. The schedules adopted vary widely. Common terms such as semester, trimester, and quarter are used to denote terms of specific durations. In most countries, the academic year begins in late summer or early autumn and ends during the following spring or summer.
Description
An academic year is the time during which an educational institution holds classes. An academic term is a portion of the academic year. The schedules adopted vary widely.
Types
Semester, trimester and quarter are all types of academic terms (the last two being mainly confined to American English), each differentiated by their duration as described below:
Semester (Latin: sēmestris, lit. 'six monthly') originally German, where it referred to a university session of six months, adopted into American usage in the early 19th century as a half-year term of typically 15 to 18 weeks. Used in the US and other countries to refer to the two main periods into which the academic year is divided at some universities.
Trimester (Latin: trimestris, lit. 'of three months') used in the US and Canada to refer to one of the three terms into which the academic year is divided at some universities.
“Academic term” enters the record as portion of a school year ending with grade assignments. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Academic, term and portion can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Academic term” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Academic, term and portion provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2269240. The Library of Congress control number is sh85118447. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Academic term” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.