Other forms: booths
A booth is a small enclosed space. In a restaurant it is a table with high-backed benches on both sides; in a hall it is a small stall or cubicle.
The word covers a lot of small enclosures: a phone booth, a voting booth, a ticket booth, a photo booth, a market booth. What they share is being just big enough for the job and no bigger. In American diners the booth is the prized seat by the window. Note that booth is an old word for a temporary stall at a fair, which is the original sense and still the one at a trade fair.
1nounboothA seating area with high-backed benches around a table.
“They took the booth at the back.”
2nounsmallA small enclosed space for one person.
“The voting booth had a stub of pencil on a string.”
3nounstallA stall at a market or exhibition.
“Our booth is at the far end of the hall.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
booth is a small enclosed space.
Old Norse buth meant a temporary dwelling, from a root meaning to dwell — the same root as the -by in English place names and as abode. A booth was originally a hut you put up for a market and took down afterwards.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰuH-
Proto-Germanic
*bōþō
non-oen
*bóð
Middle English
bothe
English, today
booth
Middle English bothe, from non-oen bóð, from Proto-Germanic bōþō, būþiz, buþǭ, from Proto-Indo-European bʰuH-. Compare Middle Low German bôde, Middle Dutch boede, German Bude.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA