Booth

How to spell booth

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce booth

What does booth mean?

1. nounA small, partly enclosed compartment or stall used for a single purpose, such as voting, telephoning, or selling goods.
2. nounA seating area in a restaurant or cafe consisting of benches and a table partly enclosed by high backs.

Booth in a sentence

• She stepped into the voting booth and marked her ballot in private.

• They asked for a corner booth so the children could spread out their colouring books.

• The festival organisers rented him a small booth to sell handmade jewellery.

• The diner had vinyl seats in every booth along the window.

Where does booth come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Booth comes from the Old Norse word búð, which meant a temporary dwelling, a tent, or a market stall, and is related to the verb búa, 'to dwell' or 'to prepare'. Scandinavian settlers carried the word into northern England during the Viking age, and it surfaces in Middle English as bothe by the 1100s, originally describing a humble shelter or a covered stall where goods were sold at a fair or market. Over the centuries the meaning narrowed and specialised toward any small, partly enclosed compartment, giving us the modern telephone booth, voting booth, and ticket booth. The same root survives in many British place names ending in -booth or -both, marking spots where temporary shelters once stood. The spelling trap is mild but real: the long 'oo' is written with a double o, and the soft ending is spelled 'th' rather than the harder sound some speakers expect.

How the word is built

• booth (single root, no affixes; from Old Norse búð 'dwelling, stall')