Room

How to spell room

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce room

What does room mean?

1. nounA part of a building enclosed by walls, floor and ceiling.
2. nounAvailable space or scope for something to occupy or happen.
3. verbTo occupy a rented lodging, often shared with another person.

Room in a sentence

• noun

  The meeting was moved to a larger room on the third floor.

• noun

  There was barely enough room in the boot for the suitcases.

• verb

  The two students agreed to room together near campus.

• noun

  She repainted the spare room over the weekend.

• noun

  The budget left little room for unexpected costs.

• verb

  He chose to room with an old colleague while working abroad.

Where does room come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Room comes straight from the Old English noun and adjective rum, which meant 'spacious' or simply 'space', and it sits among a large family of Germanic relatives, including the Dutch ruim and the German Raum, all carrying the same sense of open extent. The earliest meaning in English was abstract: room was the available space or scope to do something, as it still is in phrases like 'room to grow'. Only later, by the late medieval period, did it narrow to mean a walled-off division within a building, the everyday sense most people reach for now. The same ancient root also gave English the verb 'to roam' and the adjective 'roomy', and it is even thought to lie behind 'rummage'. Because the word keeps its double 'o' and short, blunt shape from that original rum, it is easy to spell once you remember it is a plain native word, not a borrowing dressed up with silent letters.

How the word is built

• room (from Old English rum: space, extent), a single unsuffixed root word