Courthouse

How to spell courthouse

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce courthouse

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does courthouse mean?

1. nounA building in which courts of law are held.

Courthouse in a sentence

• The jury filed back into the courthouse after a short recess.

• The lawyers met on the steps of the courthouse before the hearing.

Where does courthouse come from?

Language of origin: French

This is a transparent compound of two much older words. The first element, court, came into English through Old French cort, which descends from the Latin cohortem (also seen as cohors), originally meaning an enclosed yard or the people gathered within it; from that idea of a gathering place it grew to mean a royal household and then an assembly that dispenses justice. The second element, house, is a native Germanic word, descended from Old English hus, meaning a dwelling or building, and is related to Dutch huis and German Haus. English began joining the two as a single word in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to name the building where legal sessions are held. Because both parts are spelled exactly as they are on their own, the only real trap is remembering that it is written as one solid word rather than two, and that the silent letters of house carry over unchanged.

How the word is built

• court (a place where legal cases are heard)
• house (a building)