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Back to article: BOOTH (connected with a Teutonic root meaning to dwell, whence also " bower ")

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BOOTH (connected with a Teutonic root meaning to dwell, whence also " bower "), primarily a temporary dwelling of boughs or other slight materials. Later the word gained the special meaning of a market stall or any non-permanent erection, such as a tent at a fair, where goods were on sale. Later still it was applied to the temporary structure where votes were registered, viz. polling-booth. Temporary booths erected for the weekly markets naturally tended to become permanent shops. Thus Stow states that the houses in Old Fish Street, London, " were at first but movable boards set out on market days to show their fish there to be sold; but procuring licence to set up sheds, they grew to shops, and by little and little, to tall houses." As bothy or bothie, in Scotland, meaning generally a hut or cottage, the word was specially applied to a barrack-like room on large farms where the unmarried labourers were lodged. This, known as the Bothy system, was formerly common in Aberdeenshire and other parts of northern Scotland.