Campsite

How to spell campsite

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce campsite

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does campsite mean?

1. nounA place set aside for pitching tents or parking caravans, often with shared facilities.

Campsite in a sentence

• The family booked a lakeside campsite for the long weekend.

• Every campsite in the national park has running water and a fire pit.

Where does campsite come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a modern compound built from two older parts: camp and site. Camp came into English from the French campagne and ultimately the Latin campus, meaning an open field or level ground; in military Latin the campus was the open space where soldiers pitched their tents, which is how camp came to mean a temporary settlement. Site arrived from the Latin situs, meaning a position or the way something is placed. The two words were joined in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as recreational and military camping grew, producing campsite for a designated place where tents or caravans are set up. Because both halves are spelled exactly as they sound and join cleanly, the word rarely trips writers, though the temptation is to add a needless space or to misjudge the single s in the middle.

How the word is built

• camp (encampment; from Latin campus, an open field)
• site (a place or location)