waiting room
100
1.3
- noun
- /ˈweɪtɪŋ ruːm/
:
sala de espera
- The waiting room was full of people waiting for their appointments.
- sit in a waiting room
- go to the waiting room
- doctor's waiting room
And sitting in the waiting room was my old therapist.
- And sitting in the waiting room was my old therapist.
- Maybe the new sofas they got for the waiting room are fantastic.
- He went in with me and we sat in the waiting room for an entire hour.
- Where you live, in the waiting rooms of our prisons, women wait with well dressed kids.
- And if any of us think that we have troubles, just go to a specialty healthcare children's waiting room.
- If airports can become shopping malls and McDonald's can become playgrounds, surely we can reinvent the clinic waiting room.
- Excuse me, He's in the waiting room and he said, Paul, watch us.
- You can do it in a busy waiting room waiting for a doctor's appointment.
- And so you were seated in this waiting room being like, yes, one day.
Examples
-
Both offices had private entrances that opened to a waiting room with a reception desk.
Academic text (2009) -
I was sitting in the waiting room, playing with my baby daughter Jamie.
Academic text (1996) -
Just hang out in the waiting room, OK?
-
And then from the waiting room, I get to wait.
-
I happened to be in the waiting room.
-
This is our waiting room.
-
You can do it in a busy waiting room waiting for a doctor's appointment.
-
The waiting room was crowded, I remember.
-
The people left in the waiting room looked at each other in silence.
Fiction book (1992) -
There's a waiting room down the hall.
Synonyms
214
2.3
A room in a hotel or airport with comfortable seats to relax
12
1.8
A place with seats where people wait
1
2.3
A place with seats for several people
How Private
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound 'waiting room' is compositionally a room (space) for waiting, so a B1 learner who knows 'waiting' and 'room' can infer it denotes a place where people wait; the virtual extension (e.g. for webinars) is a straightforward metaphorical transfer. This noun+noun/gerund+noun pattern is cross-linguistically common and follows transparent compositional rules, making the expression immediately comprehensible from its parts.
Etymology
Waiting room comes from places like doctor's offices and train stations where people sit together until it is their turn. People are literally waiting in a room, so the phrase means a public place to sit and wait for an appointment or event.