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compartment

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//kəmˈpɑːtmənt//
  • United States//kəmˈpɑɹtmənt//

A room, or section, or chamber, typically within a vehicle.

noun

  1. 1

    A room, or section, or chamber, typically within a vehicle.

    Two men were seated in a well-lit compartment of a third-class railway carriage.

    This is a second-class ticket. And you're sitting in the first class!” “I'd no idea,” Haldiram said. “I didn't know what compartment was this.” And looking around, he asked, “Where does it say First Class? I still can't see it.

    Because of the heavy traffic, the 1960-61 Christmas guide to trains between King's Cross and the north stated: "To make travel conditions as comfortable as possible, passengers are requested to raise arm rests to enable four people to be seated on each side of those compartments which are fitted with arm rests."

  2. 2

    One of the parts into which an area is subdivided.

  3. 3

    The part of a protein that serves a specific function.

  4. 4

    A mound (often of grass), shelf (of e.g. wall) or other thing beneath the shield in a coat of arms on which the supporters stand.

  5. 5

    A region in the body, delimited by a biological membrane.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱe? Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Italic *kom Proto-Italic *kom- Latin com- Proto-Indo-European *perh₃- Proto-Indo-European *-tis Proto-Indo-European *pérh₃tis? Proto-Italic *partis Latin pars Latin partiō Latin partior Latin compartīrībor. Italian compartire Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥ Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥tom Proto-Italic *-mentom Latin -mentum Italian -mento Italian compartimentobor. Middle French compartimentder. English compartment First attested 1564, from Middle French compartiment, from Italian compartimento, from Late Latin compartiri (“to divide with, to share with”), from com- + partiri (“to apportion, to divide, to share”).

verb

  1. 1

    To arrange in separate compartments.

Forms

plural
compartments
past tense
compartmented
past participle
compartmented
present participle
compartmenting
third person singular
compartments
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).