Where does “headquarters” come from?
Headquarters derives from English head and English quarter, from French quartier, from French quart, from Latin -arius and Latin quattuor, meaning four.
headquarters (English): The military installation from which troops are...
Definitions
- The military installation from which troops are...
Ancestry of “headquarters”, step by step
headquarters traces back through two separate lines of ancestry.
via English quarters
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | quarters | plural of quarter; Housing, barracks or other... |
| 2 | English | quarter | "A fourth part of something."; "Place or... |
| 3 | Middle English | quarter | A quarter fourth part of something |
| 4 | Anglo-Norman | quarter | — |
| 5 | Latin | quartarius | quartarius, a Roman unit of liquid measure equivalent to about 0.14 L |
| 6 | Latin | quārtus | fourth |
| 7 | Proto-Indo-European | kʷeturtos | — |
| 8 | Proto-Indo-European | kʷetwóres | four |
| 9 | Proto-Indo-European | kʷe- | and |
via English head
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | head | The part of the body of an animal or human which... |
| 2 | English | -y | Added to nouns and adjectives to form adjectives... |
| 3 | Middle English | -y | Designates an adjective, in many cases formed by... |
| 4 | Old English | -iġ | -y, -ic |
| 5 | Proto-West Germanic | -g | Forms adjectives from nouns and verbs with a... |
| 6 | Proto-Germanic | -gaz | -y |
| 7 | Proto-Indo-European | -ḱos | -y, -ic |