Cabin

How to spell cabin

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cabin

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cabin mean?

1. nounA small, simple house or shelter, typically built of wood.
2. nounA private compartment or enclosed passenger space on a ship or aircraft.

Cabin in a sentence

• They rented a wooden cabin by the lake for the weekend.

• The flight attendant checked that every cabin light was switched off.

• The hikers reached a remote mountain cabin before nightfall.

• Their cabin on the cruise ship had a small porthole window.

Where does cabin come from?

Language of origin: French

This word reaches English through Old French cabane, meaning a hut or small hovel, which in turn came from the Late Latin capanna, the word for a small single-room shelter or peasant's hut. The ultimate source of capanna is uncertain, and it may be pre-Latin, but its sense of a humble, simple dwelling has stayed remarkably stable across the centuries. English adopted the word in the 1300s, and from the start it described a rough little building. By the 1500s, sailors had carried the sense aboard ship, where a cabin became the private compartment for an officer or passenger, and the same logic later extended to the enclosed space inside an aircraft. The spelling stayed close to the French cabane, but the second vowel softened to the unstressed schwa that catches some writers out in the ending, '-in' rather than '-en'.

How the word is built

• cabin (from Late Latin capanna: hut, single-room dwelling)