1. An established and usually public corporation or organization: After Kitty got to her financial institution, she realised that it was a holiday and it was closed!
2. The building of a foundation or organization: Raymond was told that the park he wanted to go to was across from the only institution in the village and very easy to find!
3. A conventional and accepted custom, system, practice, etc.: In many countries of the world, marriage is an accepted institution.
4. The undertaking of installing something: The institution of new school rules for smoking caused a lot of irritation among the older students at school.

Black slavery in the southern U.S. before the Civil War: The peculiar institution is one main aspect in the book Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. She describes the situation of the black people being owned by white plantation masters at Tara, the O’Hara plantation in Georgia, before the war broke out between the northern and southern states in 1861.