Foyer

How to spell foyer

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce foyer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does foyer mean?

1. nounAn entrance hall or lobby just inside the main door of a building, where people arrive, wait, or gather.

Foyer in a sentence

• Guests left their wet umbrellas in the foyer before going through to the lounge.

• The hotel foyer had marble floors and a long reception desk.

Where does foyer come from?

Language of origin: French

Foyer comes straight from French, where it meant 'hearth' or 'fireplace', and earlier the room that housed the fire. That French word traces back to the Latin focarium, 'a place for fire', built on focus, the Latin word for 'hearth' (the same root that gives us the modern 'focus'). In a French theatre the foyer was the warm public room near the fire where actors and audiences gathered between scenes, and it is this 'gathering lobby' sense that English adopted in the early nineteenth century. From the theatre it spread to mean the entrance hall of any grand building and then of ordinary homes. The unexpected 'oy' spelling and the optional French-style pronunciation are exactly what make the word a memory trap, since the letters do not match the way many people say it.

How the word is built

• foyer (from French foyer: hearth, fireplace, ultimately from Latin focus: hearth)