Dictionaries › English

bothy

Pronunciation: /ˈbɒθi/

The English word “bothy” has 3 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A small cottage or hut; specifically (Scotland), one often left unlocked for communal use in a remote, often mountainous, area by hikers, labourers, etc.
  2. A building for workers to rest in.
  3. A building on a farm, sometimes with just one room, for (usually unmarried male) farmworkers or other labourers to live in.

Etymology

Probably from booth + -y (diminutive suffix). Booth is ultimately derived from Proto-Germanic *bōþō (“building; dwelling; hut”), from *būaną (“to dwell, reside”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- (“to be”). The short vowel /ɒ/, /ɑ/, etc., in the first syllable instead of the long vowel /uː/ in booth may be due to the influence of Irish both and Scottish Gaelic both (“booth, hut”), which…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “bothy” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.