Chamberlain

How to spell chamberlain

11 letters · 3 syllables

10 of the 24 people asked to spell chamberlain in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

How to pronounce chamberlain

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chamberlain mean?

1. nounAn officer who manages the household of a monarch or noble, or who serves as a senior financial official.

Chamberlain in a sentence

• The king's chamberlain controlled who was allowed into the private apartments.

• As city chamberlain, she audited every account before the funds were released.

Where does chamberlain come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes from the Old French chamberlenc, later chambellan, the title of the officer who managed a great household or a royal court. Its first part traces back to the Late Latin camera, meaning a 'vaulted room' or 'chamber', which is also the source of the English word 'chamber' itself. The second part is a Germanic suffix, -ling, meaning roughly 'a person belonging to' or 'attached to', so the whole word literally described the attendant in charge of the private rooms. English adopted it in the 1200s, when a chamberlain was a trusted servant who looked after a lord's bedchamber and, by extension, his treasure and accounts; this is how the title also came to mean a financial officer of a city. The spelling trap lives in the ending: the final syllable sounds like a plain 'lin', yet it is written -lain, a fossil of that old Germanic suffix.

How the word is built

• chamber (private room)
• -lain (from a Germanic suffix -ling: a person attached to or in charge of)