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Outdoor

adjectiveExisting, happening, or used in the open air rather than inside a building.

How to spell outdoor

outdoor

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce outdoor

American pronunciation
OWT-dor
/ˈaʊtˌdɔr/

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does outdoor mean?

  1. adjectiveExisting, happening, or used in the open air rather than inside a building.

Outdoor in a sentence

Voice

Where does outdoor come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English compound, built straightforwardly from two old Germanic elements that English has always had. The first part, 'out', descends from Old English 'ut', meaning 'outside' or 'beyond', and the second, 'door', comes from Old English 'duru', the entrance to a building. The combination grew out of the older phrase 'out of doors', which literally meant being beyond the doorway and so out in the open air. The adjective form 'outdoor' settled into regular use in the 1800s to describe anything happening or used outside a building, while the adverb 'outdoors' carried the sense of motion or location in the open. Because both parts are familiar everyday words, the only real spelling question is whether to keep the two halves joined, and modern usage firmly writes the adjective as one solid word.

How the word is built

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