Chamber

How to spell chamber

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce chamber

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chamber mean?

1. nounA room or enclosed space, especially a private one or a hollow compartment within something.
2. nounA hall used by a legislative or judicial body, or the assembly itself.

Chamber in a sentence

• The museum guide led us into a dim burial chamber beneath the temple.

• The new bill passed the lower chamber by a narrow margin.

• Each chamber of the heart pumps blood in a fixed sequence.

• Reporters waited outside the council chamber for the verdict.

Where does chamber come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word travelled into English from the Old French chambre, meaning a room, which itself came from the Latin camera, a word for a vaulted or arched room. That Latin term was borrowed in turn from the Greek kamara, meaning anything with an arched or curved roof, so the earliest idea was less about a room in general and more about its rounded ceiling. English picked it up in the 1200s, first for a private room or bedroom, and the meaning then fanned out to cover halls where councils meet, enclosed spaces inside machines, and hollow parts of the body such as the chambers of the heart. The original camera also survives unchanged as the modern photographic camera, which began life as the camera obscura, literally a 'dark room'. The spelling trap is the soft 'ch' sound paired with the unexpected silent feel of the '-ber' ending, which echoes the French chambre rather than the Latin camera.

How the word is built

• chamber (from Latin camera: a vaulted room)
• -er (the French -re ending reshaped in English)