Other forms: chapters
A chapter is one numbered part of a book. Chapter three, the last chapter, read a chapter a night.
Chapters divide a long text into readable stretches, and in non-fiction they are usually titled as well as numbered. Figuratively, a chapter is a distinct period in a life or history: a new chapter, closing a chapter, a dark chapter. In America, a chapter is also a local branch of a national organisation. Note chapter and verse, meaning the exact source of something, from the way Bible references are given.
1nounchapterOne numbered part of a book.
“The first chapter is fifty pages and the last is four.”
2noundistinctA distinct period in a life or history.
“That was a difficult chapter and it is closed now.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
chapter is a division of a book or a period.
Latin capitulum is a little head, from caput — a chapter is a heading, and the section took its name from the words at the top of it. The cathedral chapter, the governing body of clergy, is the same word, from a daily reading of a chapter of the rule.
Proto-Indo-European
*kap-
Latin
capitulum — a chapter of a book, in Medieval Latin also a synod or council
Old French
chapitre
Middle English
chapitre
English, today
chapter
Built from
From Middle English chapitre, from Old French chapitre, from Latin capitulum (“a chapter of a book, in Medieval Latin also a synod or council”), diminutive of caput (“a head”); see a doublet of capital and capitulum and chapiter, which are doublets of chapter.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA