Atrium

How to spell atrium

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce atrium

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does atrium mean?

1. nounA large open central space in a building, usually rising through several floors and topped with a glass roof or skylight.
2. nounEither of the two upper chambers of the heart that receive blood returning from the body or lungs.

Atrium in a sentence

• The hotel atrium rises five storeys to a glass ceiling.

• Blood from the lungs enters the left atrium of the heart.

• Sunlight floods the office atrium every morning.

• The scan revealed an enlarged right atrium.

Where does atrium come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes straight from Latin atrium, the name for the central, partly open courtyard at the heart of a Roman house, into which the rooms opened and where the household gathered. Romans built these courts with a roof opening that let in light and rain, with a basin set in the floor below to catch the water. One older theory links the name to ater, meaning 'black' or 'sooty', because the early hearth in this central room blackened the walls, though this origin is not certain. English borrowed the word in its full Latin form in the 1500s for the Roman feature, then extended it in modern architecture to the bright, glass-roofed central space of an office or hotel. Anatomists later reused the same Latin word for each of the two upper chambers of the heart, picturing them as entrance halls leading into the ventricles. The kept Latin ending -um is the spelling clue: this is a borrowed Latin neuter noun, which is also why its plural is often written 'atria'.

How the word is built

• atri- (from Latin atrium: central hall)
• -um (Latin neuter noun suffix)