chamber
Definitions
General English
- noun an official room
- noun a space in a part of a machine, especially one of the spaces for bullets in a gun
Aviation
- noun a small enclosed compartment
Cars & Driving
- noun combustion chamber of a rotary piston engine, particularly where non-cylindrical, as in a Wankel engine
Electronics
- An enclosed section, compartment, space, or room. Examples include anechoic, resonant, and ion chambers.
Law
- noun a room where a committee or legislature meets
Medical
Military
- noun the part of a gun in which a round is placed for firing
Politics
- noun a part of a parliament where a group of representatives meet, or the representatives meeting there. In many parliaments there is a lower chamber and an upper chamber.
Real Estate
- noun a room used for a particular purpose
Origin & History of “chamber”
The ultimate source of chamber is Greek kamárā ‘something with an arched cover, room with a vaulted roof’. this passed into Latin as camara or camera (source of English camera), and in Old French became transformed into chambre, the immediate source of the English word. Related forms in English include comrade (from Spanish camarada), originally ‘someone sharing a room’; chamberlain (13th c.), which was originally coined in the west Germanic language of the Franks as *kamerling using the diminutive suffix -ling, and came into English via Old French chamberlenc; and chimney.
