Laboratories

How to spell laboratories

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce laboratories

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does laboratories mean?

1. nounRooms or buildings equipped for scientific experiments, research, or testing.

Laboratories in a sentence

• The university runs three separate laboratories for chemistry, biology, and physics.

• The company sends every blood sample to accredited laboratories for analysis.

Where does laboratories come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word goes back to the Latin laboratorium, which meant simply 'a place for working', built on the verb laborare, 'to labour or toil', and ultimately on the noun labor, meaning 'work' or 'effort'. Medieval Latin used laboratorium for a workshop, and especially for the rooms where alchemists carried out their experiments. English adopted the singular 'laboratory' in the early 1600s, when scientific investigation was beginning to be done in dedicated, equipped spaces. Over time the word narrowed to the modern sense of a room or building fitted out for scientific research and testing. The plural 'laboratories' simply changes the final -y to -ies, the regular English rule after a consonant, and the buried 'labor' inside it is the clue worth remembering when the unstressed middle syllables blur together in speech.

How the word is built

• labor- (from Latin labor: work)
• -ator (agent/place)
• -y (noun)
• -ies (plural)