Chamberlain

How to spell chamberlain

11 letters · 3 syllables

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)