DictionaryAI

booth

noun
SayBOOTH/buːθ/

Pluralbooths

6 meanings of booth

Practice

  1. 1
    market stallnouncountable
    A small stall or stand where goods are set out to be shown and sold.

    Each spring he rents a booth at the flea market to sell old records.

    Vendors lined the fairgrounds with booths offering T-shirts, posters, and local honey.

    Similarstall, stand, kiosk

  2. 2
    one-person roomnouncountable
    A boxlike room or enclosure just big enough for one person standing up, such as a phone booth or a voting booth.

    She drew the curtain of the booth closed and marked her ballot in private.

    He squeezed into the booth, pulled the folding door shut, and dropped coins into the phone.

    Similarcubicle, compartment

  3. 3
    diner seatingnouncountable
    An enclosed seating area, as in a diner or cafe, with a table set against a wall between two high-backed benches.

    The waitress led us to a booth in the back, away from the noisy counter.

    They slid into opposite sides of the booth and spread the map across the table.

  4. 4
    recording studionounslangcountable
    A recording studio, the place where an artist records music; used with "the".

    Two weeks after signing the deal, he was back in the booth laying down verses.

    The producer told her to stop talking and get in the booth.

    Similarstudio

    Note

    Rap talk always gives it the article: in the booth, back in the booth, get in the booth. To be in the booth is to be recording, and the phrase carries the energy of hip-hop slang; formal writing about music would say studio. Drop the article and a listener pictures the one-person box instead, a phone or voting booth.

Less common meanings

  1. 5
    temporary shelternoundatedcountable
    A temporary shelter, often in the form of a tent, a shed, or a structure with a canopy.

    The shepherds put up a booth of woven branches on the hillside for the summer.

    The army camped by the river, its leaders' booths set apart from the soldiers' tents.

    Similarshelter, hut, shed

    Note

    A king lies in state in his booth in E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros (1922), and that shows the reach of this dated sense: any shelter raised for a while, a tent or a canopy as much as a hut. Because readers now picture the market stall or the one-person box first, plain modern prose does better with tent or shelter.

  2. 6
    noun
    An enclosure for keeping animals.

Practice

Can you tell the meanings of booth apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.

Origin

Inherited from Middle English bothe, from Old East Norse *bóð, from Proto-Germanic *bōþō, *būþiz, *buþǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH-. Compare Middle Low German bôde, Middle Dutch boede and German Bude.