Plural of “symposium”

The plural of symposium is symposia (some dictionaries also accept symposiums).

Why

"Symposium" comes from Greek "symposion," literally a "drinking together" ("syn," together, plus "posis," a drink), describing the ancient Greek custom of a formal gathering for drinking, conversation, and intellectual discussion after a banquet — most famously the setting of Plato's dialogue of the same name. The word passed into Latin largely unchanged and kept a Latin-style neuter plural, "symposia," when it entered English in the 18th century to describe formal academic gatherings.

Modern academic and scientific conferences adopted "symposium" to describe a structured meeting of experts on a topic, stripping away the drinking-party origins entirely, and that academic world has kept "symposia" as the standard plural in formal writing far more consistently than many other Greek-via-Latin borrowings. Outside academia, in general journalism and everyday speech about conferences and panels, "symposiums" has become common and unremarkable.

Usage note

In academic, scientific, and medical writing, use "symposia" ("a series of symposia on climate policy"). In general or journalistic writing describing conferences more loosely, "symposiums" is entirely acceptable and often reads more naturally to readers unfamiliar with the classical plural.

Medical and scientific fields sometimes hold a "satellite symposium," a smaller, sponsor-funded session held alongside a larger conference and often focused on a single product or narrow research question — a specialized subtype of the word's broader academic meaning that has its own particular conventions around funding disclosure.

Common real mistakes

Some writers assume "symposium" is simply a fancier word for "conference" or "seminar" and use its plural interchangeably without noticing the specific connotation of expert discussion the word carries; that's a meaning issue rather than a grammar one, but it often travels alongside plural confusion, since writers unsure of the word's precise sense are also often unsure how to pluralize it. The grammar mistake itself is the usual one: treating "symposia" as singular. A further point of care: describing a small internal team meeting as a "symposium" tends to overstate its formality, since the word implies a genuinely public or academic gathering of independent experts.

The wider pattern

"Symposium/symposia" belongs to a smaller subgroup of Greek-origin words that passed through Latin before reaching English — like "criterion/criteria" and "phenomenon/phenomena" — though unlike those two, "symposium" took on a Latin-style -um ending rather than keeping a distinctly Greek one, which is part of why its regularized plural "symposiums" has gained ground more easily than "criterions" or "phenomenons" ever have. Plato's dialogue of the same name is largely responsible for the word's enduring intellectual prestige in English: because that particular symposium was remembered specifically for its speeches on the nature of love rather than for the wine that accompanied them, later scholars borrowing the term tended to emphasize serious discussion over festivity, which is exactly the sense that survived into modern academic use.

Examples

• The university hosted a symposium on renewable energy policy.
• Researchers from a dozen countries attended the symposia held that spring.
• She presented her findings at an international symposium on genetics.
• The department organizes an annual symposium for graduate students.
• Several symposiums took place simultaneously across different lecture halls.
• The symposium concluded with a panel discussion on future research.
• Scholars from various fields were invited to speak at the symposia.
• The medical symposium drew attention from journalists worldwide.
• A one-day symposium on urban planning is scheduled for next month.
• Attendance at the symposia has grown steadily over the past decade.
• The philosophy department hosts a symposium every spring on ethics and technology.
• Delegates from several symposia compared notes during the coffee break.
• The keynote speaker had attended similar symposiums on three different continents.
• A satellite symposium ran alongside the main medical conference all week.
• The symposium's proceedings were later published as a bound collection of papers.
• Attendees at the symposium exchanged contact information during the final networking session.