Garage

How to spell garage

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce garage

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does garage mean?

1. nounA building or part of a building in which a motor vehicle is kept.
2. nounA commercial establishment where motor vehicles are repaired and sometimes fuelled.
3. verbTo put or keep a motor vehicle in a garage.

Garage in a sentence

• noun

  He parked the car in the garage and locked the door for the night.

• noun

  She took the van to the garage to have the brakes replaced.

• verb

  He likes to garage the classic car every winter to protect the paintwork.

• noun

  They converted the old garage into a spare bedroom.

• noun

  The local garage charged a fair price for the new tyres.

Where does garage come from?

Language of origin: French

Garage comes directly from the French noun garage, which meant a place for storing or sheltering something, built on the verb garer, meaning 'to shelter', 'to dock', or 'to put out of the way'. That verb traces back to an old Frankish and Germanic root tied to the idea of guarding or keeping safe, the same family that gives us 'guard' and 'ward'. The word entered English at the very start of the twentieth century, around 1902, precisely because the new motor car needed somewhere to be kept; before that there had been no need for the term. English took the French spelling and the soft -age ending wholesale, which is exactly why the word looks French and why the ending is spelled -age rather than the more English-looking -idge that some pronunciations suggest. The link to garer, 'to put away safely', is a useful reminder that a garage is simply the place you stow the car.

How the word is built

• gar- (from French garer: to shelter or dock)
• -age (noun suffix denoting place or action)