Art & MusicGreek → English
Chamber
/ˈtʃeɪmbər/noun
An enclosed space, from a private room to a hollow inside a machine or body.
The Greek roots
καμάρα
kamára
vaulted room, arched cover
Literally: “vaulted room”
Follow a root:καμάρα2 words
The story of the word
Καμάρα meant anything with an arched roof, including the covered carriage the Greeks saw among the Persians. Latin camera kept the vault sense, and Old French chambre had flattened it to a bedroom by the time English borrowed it. The same Latin word came back much later, unaltered, as camera, by way of camera obscura, the dark room that projects an image.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 13th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
cameracomradechamberlainbicameral
In a sentence
The council met in the upper chamber, under a ceiling that swallowed every voice.