In Latin, camara or camera denoted a vaulted ceiling or roof. Later, the word simply mean “room, chamber” and was inherited by many European languages with that meaning. In the Spanish, the word became cámara, and a derivative of that was camarada “a group of soldiers quartered in a room” and hence “fellow soldier, companion.” That Spanish word was borrowed into French as camarade and then into Elizabethan English as both camerade and comerade.
He enjoys spending time with his old army comrades.
the boy, and two others who are known to be his comrades, are wanted for questioning by the police
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Hunted by military police and sentenced to death by their comrades, only two survive to attempt to reconstruct their lives.—Holly Jones, Variety, 17 May 2025 Indeed, the three-time Grammy winner and Zac Brown Band founding member spent summer 2024 traveling the country with his musical comrades and alongside Kenny Chesney on the Sun Goes Down tour, all while Hopkins continued to battle degenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).—Tricia Despres, People.com, 12 May 2025 More grounded in reality than his tech-utopian comrades and financially ascendant thanks to his skeptic’s foresight about crises like the one Ven has caused, Jeff is reluctant to bail out his frenemy.—Judy Berman, Time, 23 May 2025 Godard has no script, working instead from a treatment by his comrade François Truffaut, and also from ideas that come to mind before and during shooting; whenever inspiration runs dry, production wraps for the day.—Justin Chang, New Yorker, 20 May 2025 See All Example Sentences for comrade
Word History
Etymology
Middle French camarade group sleeping in one room, roommate, companion, from Old Spanish camarada, from cámara room, from Late Latin camera, camara — more at chamber
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