Bungalow

How to spell bungalow

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce bungalow

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bungalow mean?

1. nounA house built on a single level, usually small and detached.

Bungalow in a sentence

• The retired couple bought a small bungalow near the coast.

• Every room in the bungalow sits on the same floor, so there are no stairs.

Where does bungalow come from?

Language of origin: Other

Bungalow entered English in the seventeenth century from the Hindustani word bangla, which literally meant 'belonging to Bengal' or 'in the Bengali style'. It originally described the low, single-storey houses with wide verandahs that local people built in the Bengal region, the kind of dwelling British traders and colonial officials adopted for the hot climate. As the English took the word home, the spelling was reshaped to fit familiar patterns, giving the easy-to-misplace -ow ending and the doubled vowel sounds in the middle. By the nineteenth century it had spread across the English-speaking world to mean any modest detached house built on one level. The chief spelling trap is the unstressed middle vowel, written 'a' (bung-A-low) where the ear hears only a faint schwa, plus the surprising -ow finish that copies words like 'window'.

How the word is built

• bangla (Hindustani: 'of Bengal', a single-storey house)
• anglicised -ow ending