roomer
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From room + -er (agent noun suffix) or + -er (measurement suffix) (sense 2).
Pronunciation
[edit]- Homophones: rumor
Noun
[edit]roomer (plural roomers)
- A person who rents a room.
- 1987 December 20, Joseph Beam, “Not A Bad Legacy, Brother”, in Gay Community News, volume 15, number 23, page 8:
- Many years ago, while rummaging through cartons in our basement, I found a tattered, coverless copy of James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room. It had probably been left behind by one of the roomers with whom we shared our house.
- (in combination) A residence having the specified number of rooms.
- 2009, Peter H. L. Lim, Chronicle of Singapore, 1959-2009: Fifty Years of Headline News, page 59:
- Rents were to be $60 a month for a two-room flat, $90 for a three-roomer and $120 for a four-roomer.
Adverb
[edit]roomer (not comparable)
- (obsolete) At a greater distance; farther off.[1]
- 1581, Richard Madox, A Learned and a Godly Sermon, to be read of all men, but especially for all marryners, captaynes and passengers, which trauell the seas[1], London:
- The Captaine in a Shippe of warre, is a iollie fellowe, and thinketh himselfe a lyttle God, because hee speaketh prowdlie to the Souldiors, and maketh them quayle at the shaking of his lockes: […] If any be vnrulie, hee casteth him ouerboorde, or if any be fearefull, hee bindes him to the Maste: if hée crie aloofe, the Helmes man dares not goe roomer: and if hée bidde shoote, the gunner dares not but giue fyre.
- 1607, John Harington (translator), Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, London: John Norton and Simon Waterson, Book 41, stanza 17, p. 343,[2]
- Yet did the master by all meanes assay,
- To steare out roomer, or to keepe aloofe,
- Or at the least to strike sailes if they may,
- As in such danger was for their behoofe.
References
[edit]- ^ “roomer”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.