Booth

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.

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