Fireplace

How to spell fireplace

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce fireplace

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fireplace mean?

1. nounA recess or structure in a room, usually built into a wall, designed to hold a domestic fire.

Fireplace in a sentence

• They hung the family stockings above the fireplace each December.

• A crackling log in the fireplace warmed the whole living room.

Where does fireplace come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, joining two old and familiar words. 'Fire' descends from the Old English fyr, a Germanic word for the visible flame and heat of burning, sharing ancestry with the Dutch vuur and German Feuer. 'Place' arrived later from Old French place, meaning an open space or square, which itself came from the Latin platea, 'a broad street or courtyard', and ultimately from a Greek word meaning 'broad'. By the early 1700s English speakers had welded the two together to name the recessed spot in a wall built to hold a domestic fire. Because both parts are everyday words spelled exactly as they sound, the compound carries no hidden trap beyond remembering that it is written as a single solid word.

How the word is built

• fire (open flame)
• place (a defined spot), a closed compound noun