room

English Online Dictionary. What means room‎? What does room mean?

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ɹʊm/, /ɹuːm/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ɹum/
• (Scotland, Northern Ireland) IPA^(key): /ɹʉm/, /ɾʉm/
• (New England, Tidewater, Ottawa Valley) IPA^(key): /ɹʊm/
• Homophone: rheum (/ɹu(ː)m/, /ɹʉm/)
• Homophone: rum (/ɹʊm/) (without the foot-strut split)
• Rhymes: -uːm, -ʊm

Etymology 1

From Middle English roum, from Old English rūm (“room, space”), from Proto-West Germanic *rūm (“room”), from Proto-Germanic *rūmą (“room”), from Proto-Indo-European *rewh₁- (“free space”).

Cognate with Low German Ruum, Dutch ruimte (“space”) and Dutch ruim (“cargo load”), German Raum (“space, interior space”), Danish rum (“space, locality”), Norwegian rom (“space”), Swedish rum (“space, location”), and also with Latin rūs (“country, field, farm”) through Indo-European. More at rural.

In the standard language, it is ostensibly an exception to the Great Vowel Shift, which otherwise would have produced the pronunciation /ɹaʊm/, but /aʊ/ does not occur before noncoronal consonants in standard Modern English native vocabulary. The pronunciation /ɹaʊm/ does occur in, for example, Lancashire.

Noun

room (countable and uncountable, plural rooms)

1. (now rare) Opportunity or scope (to do something). [from 9th c.]
2. (uncountable) Space for something, or to carry out an activity. [from 10th c.]
3. (archaic) A particular portion of space. [from 11th c.]
4. (uncountable, figuratively) Sufficient space for or to do something. [from 15th c.]
5. (nautical) A space between the timbers of a ship's frame. [from 15th c.]
6. (obsolete) Place; stead.
8. (countable) A separate part of a building, enclosed by walls, a floor and a ceiling. [from 15th c.]
9. (countable, with possessive pronoun) (One's) bedroom.
10. (in the plural) A set of rooms inhabited by someone; one's lodgings. [from 17th c.]
11. (usually in the singular, metonymically) The people in a room. [from 17th c.]

12. (mining) An area for working in a coal mine. [from 17th c.]
13. (caving) A portion of a cave that is wider than a passage. [from 17th c.]
14. (Internet, countable) An IRC or chat room. [from 20th c.]
15. Place or position in society; office; rank; post, sometimes when vacated by its former occupant.
16. A quantity of furniture sufficient to furnish one room.

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:room.

Synonyms

• (space): elbow room, legroom, space
• (part of a building): chamber, quarters
• (part of a cave): chamber
• rm
• See also Thesaurus:room

Hyponyms

• See Category:en:Rooms

Meronyms

Holonyms

Derived terms

Related terms

Descendants

• → Japanese: ルーム (rūmu)
• → Kikuyu: rumu
• → Maori: rūma

Translations

Verb

room (third-person singular simple present rooms, present participle rooming, simple past and past participle roomed)

1. (intransitive) To reside, especially as a boarder or tenant.
2. (transitive) To assign to a room; to allocate a room to.

Derived terms

Translations

References

Etymology 2

From Middle English roum, rom, rum, from Old English rūm (“roomy, spacious, ample, extensive, large, open, unencumbered, unoccupied, temporal, long, extended, great, liberal, unrestricted, unfettered, clear, loose, free from conditions, free from occupation, not restrained within due limits, lax, far-reaching, abundant, noble, august”), from Proto-Germanic *rūmaz (“roomy, spacious”), from Proto-Indo-European *rewh₁- (“free space”). Cognate with Scots roum (“spacious, roomy”), Dutch ruim (“roomy, spacious, wide”), Danish rum (“wide, spacious”), German raum (“wide”), Icelandic rúmur (“spacious”).

Adjective

room (comparative more room, superlative most room)

1. (dialectal or obsolete) Wide; spacious; roomy.

Etymology 3

From Middle English rome, from Old English rūme (“widely, spaciously, roomily, far and wide, so as to extend over a wide space, liberally, extensively, amply, abundantly, in a high degree, without restriction or encumbrance, without the pressure of care, light-heartedly, without obstruction, plainly, clearly, in detail”). Cognate with Dutch ruim (“amply”, adverb).

Adverb

room (comparative more room, superlative most room)

1. (dialectal or obsolete) Far; at a distance; wide in space or extent.
2. (nautical) Off from the wind.

Etymology 4

Noun

room (uncountable)

1. Alternative form of roum (“deep blue dye”)

Further reading

• Room in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)
• room on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “room”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “room”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• Moor, Moro, Romo, moor

Afrikaans

Etymology

From Dutch room, from Middle Dutch rôme, from Old Dutch *rōm, from Proto-West Germanic *raum, from Proto-Germanic *raumaz, , from Proto-Indo-European *réwgʰmn̥ (“cream”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /rʊə̯m/

Noun

room (uncountable)

1. cream

Dutch

Etymology

From Middle Dutch rôme, from Old Dutch *rōm, from Proto-West Germanic *raum, from Proto-Germanic *raumaz, from Proto-Indo-European *réwgʰmn̥ (“cream”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /roːm/
• Hyphenation: room
• Rhymes: -oːm

Noun

room m (uncountable)

1. cream (of milk)

Derived terms

• afromen
• ontromen
• roomboter
• roomijs
• roomsaus
• slagroom

Descendants

• Afrikaans: room
• Negerhollands: room
• → Papiamentu: rom, room

Anagrams

• moor