Sidebar

How to spell sidebar

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sidebar

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sidebar mean?

1. nounA narrow column of secondary content placed beside the main body of a page or screen.
2. nounA private discussion between the judge and lawyers, held aside from the jury.
3. nounA short digression or aside set apart from the main discussion.

Sidebar in a sentence

• The news site moved its advert into a sidebar on the right.

• The lawyer requested a sidebar to dispute the evidence privately.

• As a quick sidebar, she mentioned that the budget had already been approved.

• Links to related articles appear in the sidebar of each page.

• The judge called both attorneys to a sidebar before ruling.

• The report adds a sidebar explaining the technical terms for new readers.

Where does sidebar come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Sidebar is a transparent English compound, joining 'side' and 'bar'. The first element comes from the Old English 'side', a Germanic word meaning the flank or edge of something, the same root that gives us 'beside' and 'sideways'. The second element, 'bar', arrived from Old French 'barre', meaning a rod or barrier, and over time it came to label many bar-shaped or boundary-like things, including the railing in a courtroom. The compound itself is modern: in American legal usage it named a private conference held to the side of the judge's bench, away from the jury, and in printing and later web design it named a narrow column set to the side of the main text. The spelling holds no trap beyond remembering that it is a single closed word rather than two, since both halves are short, familiar, and spelled exactly as they sound.

How the word is built

• side (Old English side: flank, edge)
• bar (Old French barre: rod, barrier)