Chamber: A Room, a Legislature, and a Space Inside the Body
A chamber is a room, usually a formal or enclosed one. Parliaments, hearts, guns and courts all have chambers, and the word keeps its sense of an enclosed space throughout.
A chamber is an enclosed space. The word once simply meant bedroom, and everything else has grown out of that: legislative chambers, the chambers of the heart, the chamber of a firearm, and the barrister's chambers where a case is prepared.
- A room, often formal. *The council chamber.*
- A legislative house. *The upper chamber rejected the bill.*
- A cavity in the body. *The four chambers of the heart.*
- The part of a gun holding the round. *An empty chamber.*
- A barrister's offices. *He took a case at chambers.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | chamber | A burial chamber. |
| Plural | chambers | The judge saw them in chambers. |
| Adjective | chambered | A chambered tomb. |
| Compound | chamber music | An evening of chamber music. |
| Compound | chamber of commerce | The local chamber of commerce. |
How it is used in a sentence
- The chamber sat late into the night.Meaning the legislature itself, not the room.
- Blood passes from the upper chamber to the lower.Anatomy — atria above, ventricles below.
- They performed chamber music in the hall.Written for a small group, originally for a room rather than a concert hall.
Chambers you meet often
- Chamber of commerce — a local association of businesses
- Chamber music — written for a handful of players
- Chamber pot — the bedroom vessel, and the oldest surviving sense
- Echo chamber — a space where sound bounces, now used of closed opinion circles
- Decompression chamber — a sealed room for divers returning to surface pressure
From Old French *chambre*, from Latin *camera*, a vaulted room. The same *camera* gives English camera, by way of the *camera obscura*, a dark chamber with a pinhole that projected an image onto its wall.
Why is a courtroom meeting called in chambers?
Because it happens in the judge's private rooms rather than in open court, so it is not public.
Is chamber music played in a chamber?
Originally yes — it was music for a room in a house rather than a church or theatre. The name outlasted the setting.