Courtroom

How to spell courtroom

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce courtroom

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does courtroom mean?

1. nounThe room or chamber in which a court of law conducts its hearings and trials.

Courtroom in a sentence

• The jury filed back into the courtroom after two hours of deliberation.

• Reporters were not allowed to film inside the courtroom during the trial.

Where does courtroom come from?

Language of origin: French

This word is a transparent compound of 'court' and 'room', both of which entered English long before they were joined. 'Court' arrived through Old French 'cort' from the Latin 'cohors', which originally meant an enclosed yard or enclosure and only later came to mean a sovereign's residence and the body of people who administered justice there. 'Room' is a native Old English word, 'rum', meaning open space or extent, related to the same Germanic root that gives modern German 'Raum'. The two were welded together as a single noun for the chamber where legal trials are heard, a usage that became common in English from around the early nineteenth century. Because both parts are familiar everyday words, the compound is spelled exactly as you would expect, with the double 'o' of 'room' kept intact.

How the word is built

• court (a tribunal, from Latin cohors: enclosure)
• room (a space within a building)