Other forms: cabins
A cabin is the enclosed space inside an aircraft or a ship where people sit or sleep. Cabin crew, a cabin on a ferry, cabin pressure.
It is also a small simple house made of wood, usually in a remote place — a log cabin, a cabin in the woods. The two senses share the idea of a small enclosed space and nothing else. Note the useful compounds: cabin baggage is what you take on board, cabin fever is the irritability of being shut in too long, and a cabinet is a different word entirely despite the resemblance.
1nounaircraftThe part of an aircraft or ship where people sit or sleep.
“Cabin crew, doors to manual.”
2nouncabinA small simple house, usually of wood.
“They rented a cabin by the lake for a week.”
3nounroomA small room on a ship for sleeping.
“Our cabin was below the waterline and had no window.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
cabin is an enclosed space.
Medieval Latin capanna meant a hut, and it reached English through Old French cabane. The same word gives cabaret, which was originally a small room where people drank, and cabin has never meant anything but a small enclosed space.
Medieval Latin
capanna — a cabin
Old French
cabane
Middle English
caban
English, today
cabin
From Middle English caban, cabane, from Old French cabane, from Medieval Latin capanna (“a cabin”); see further etymology there. a doublet of cabana and cabane.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA