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cabinet

KAB-uh-nit · noun

FrenchEnglish

Origin

Cabinet comes from cabin plus the suffix -et, shaped along the way by the French word cabinet. It originally named a small private room.

Journey

From a literal little chamber, the word came to describe the group of advisors who met in such a room to discuss state affairs — the meeting place lending its name to the meeting itself.

Related words

It works much like salon, another word that started as the name of a room and came to mean the gathering that happened inside it.

More words

From French

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