Headquarters

How to spell headquarters

12 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce headquarters

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does headquarters mean?

1. nounThe central office or location from which an organisation, business, or military force is directed.

Headquarters in a sentence

• The company moved its headquarters to a glass tower downtown.

• All major decisions are signed off at headquarters before they reach the regional teams.

Where does headquarters come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Headquarters is a transparent compound of 'head', meaning chief or principal, and 'quarters', meaning an assigned place of lodging or station. The 'quarters' element traces back through Old French 'quartier' to the Latin 'quartus', meaning 'fourth', because a quarter was originally a fourth part of something, including a district of a town where soldiers might be billeted; from that came the sense of an allotted dwelling or station. The full term arose in military usage during the 1600s to name the place where a commander and the central staff were stationed, the 'head' or principal quarters from which orders flowed. Over time it broadened to cover the main office of any organisation, business, or institution. The spelling trap lives in the silent-ish cluster 'quar', the awkward 'dq' join where 'head' meets 'quarters', and the fact that the word almost always carries its final 's' even when it refers to a single building.

How the word is built

• head (chief, principal)
• quarter (a station or place of lodging, from Latin quartus 'fourth')
• -s (plural)