'Orchestra' was the dancing floor in Greek theaters — the word shifted from the place to the musicians in it.
A large ensemble of instrumentalists, especially one combining string, woodwind, brass, and percussion sections; also, the area of a theater where musicians sit.
From Latin 'orchestra,' from Greek 'orkhḗstra,' which was the semicircular space in front of the stage in a Greek theater where the chorus danced and sang. The Greek word derives from 'orkheîsthai' (to dance), so an orchestra was originally a dancing floor, not a group of musicians. The shift from 'place where people dance' to 'group of people who play instruments' occurred in the seventeenth century as the term was applied to the area in front of the stage where instrumentalists sat, and then to the instrumentalists themselves. Key roots: orkhḗstra (Ancient Greek: "dancing floor
In ancient Greek theaters, the orchestra was a circular dancing ground — there were no 'orchestras' of musicians in the modern sense. The word made its greatest semantic leap in the seventeenth century, migrating from the place where people performed to the people who performed there, as if the word 'stage' had come to mean 'actors.'