exercise

• exercice (obsolete; noun senses only)

From Middle English exercise, from Old French exercise, from Latin exercitium.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɛk.sə.saɪz/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɛk.sɚ.saɪz/
• Hyphenation: ex‧er‧cise

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exercise (countable and uncountable, plural exercises)

1. Any activity designed to develop or hone a skill or ability.

   The teacher told us the next exercise is to write an essay.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Edmund Spenser

     desire of knightly exercise

   • (Can we date this quote?) John Locke

     an exercise of the eyes and memory

2. Physical activity intended to improve strength and fitness.
   • 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, OCLC 639762314, page 0108:

     This new-comer was a man who in any company would have seemed striking. […] He was smooth-faced, and his fresh skin and well-developed figure bespoke the man in good physical condition through active exercise, yet well content with the world's apportionment.

3. A setting in action or practicing; employment in the proper mode of activity; exertion; application; use.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Thomas Jefferson

     exercise of the important function confided by the constitution to the legislature

   • (Can we date this quote?) Alfred Tennyson

     O we will walk this world, / Yoked in all exercise of noble end.

4. The performance of an office, ceremony, or duty.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Joseph Addison

     Lewis refused even those of the church of England […] the public exercise of their religion.

   • (Can we date this quote?) William Shakespeare

     to draw him from his holy exercise

5. (obsolete) That which gives practice; a trial; a test.
   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     Patience is more oft the exercise / Of saints, the trial of their fortitude.

exercise (third-person singular simple present exercises, present participle exercising, simple past and past participle exercised)

1. To exert for the sake of training or improvement; to practice in order to develop.

   to exercise troops or horses;  to exercise one's brain with a puzzle

2. (intransitive) To perform physical activity for health or training.

   I exercise at the gym every day.

3. (transitive) To use (a right, an option, etc.); to put into practice.

   The tenant exercised its option to renew the tenancy.

   She is going to exercise her right to vote.

   • Bible, Ezekiel xxii. 29

     The people of the land have used oppression and exercised robbery.

4. (now often in passive) To occupy the attention and effort of; to task; to tax, especially in a painful or vexatious manner; harass; to vex; to worry or make anxious.

   exercised with pain

   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     Where pain of unextinguishable fire / Must exercise us without hope of end.

5. (obsolete) To set in action; to cause to act, move, or make exertion; to give employment to.
   • Bible, Acts xxiv. 16

     Herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence.

   • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter I, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, OCLC 40817384:

     Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence.

• train
• work out

• exercise in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• exercise in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.