cabin

1 of 2

noun

cab·​in ˈka-bən 

1

a(1)

: a private room on a ship or boat

(2)

: a compartment below deck on a boat used for living accommodations

b

: the passenger or cargo compartment of a vehicle (such as an airplane or automobile)

c

: the crew compartment of an exploratory vehicle (such as a spacecraft)

2

: a small one-story dwelling usually of simple construction

3

chiefly British : cab sense 3

cabin

2 of 2

verb

cabined; cabining; cabins

intransitive verb

: to live in or as if in a cabin

transitive verb

: confine, restrain

… significantly cabins the discretion of administrators.

—A. M. Dershowitz

Synonyms of cabin

Noun

• hut
• camp
• shack

Examples of cabin in a Sentence

Noun

a cabin in the woods

Don't unbuckle your seat belt until the flight attendant says it is safe to move around the cabin.

Recent Examples on the Web

Noun

Currently $49, this classic hoodie is ideal for cozying up in a chilly plane cabin or running downstairs for hotel breakfast, thanks to its breathable French terry material. —Sophie Dodd, Travel + Leisure, 26 Oct. 2025

In 2024 alone, HX donated over 1,900 cabin nights to 87 scientists. —Brad Japhe, HollywoodReporter, 25 Oct. 2025

Verb

But Colter's buildings are not the oldest in the lodge and cabins complex. —Michael Salerno, AZCentral.com, 24 Sep. 2025

Guests can choose to stay in the main lodge, cabins that range from one to four bedrooms or a campground where RVs and tents are allowed. —Elliott Harrell, Southern Living, 9 Sep. 2025

Word History

Etymology

Noun

Middle English caban, cabayne "hut, shelter made of wood, earth, or stones, small room, room on a ship," borrowed from Middle French cabane "hut used for temporary shelter" or its source, Old Occitan cabana, going back to pre-Latin *capanna, of uncertain origin

Note: Alongside cabane, French also has cabine "room on a ship, compartment on a train or plane." Modern uses of this word appear to depend heavily on English cabin, but in the earliest attestations, from the civil records of the city of Lille (1364, 1384), cabine refers to a room or building used as a gambling den ("cabane où l'on se réunit pour jouer"). Oxford English Dictionary, first edition, and Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch both take this cabine as the source of the -en/-in spellings of English cabin, though the evidence is not certain, and depends on how the vowel of the second syllable was rendered after the shift of stress to the first syllable. Note that Oxford's earliest -en/-in spelling, in John Palsgrave's Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse (1530) renders English "cabbyn in a shippe" with French cabain, not cabine. It is also of interest that the meaning "room in a ship" turns up first in English (caban in a naval document of 1346—see Middle English Dictionary), the earliest record of the English word in any sense. Is it possible that the word was acquired from French or directly from Occitan via the English military campaigns in Aquitaine, and developed certain senses entirely within English? – Outcomes of the etymon *capanna are found over a large part of the Romance speech area; there is a variant *camanna in Alpine dialects (see Lessico etimologico italiano). The earliest Latin evidence of the word is in Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae (15.12.2). In the Reichenau Glosses, compiled in the ninth century in northern France, the classical Latin word tugurium "rudimentary dwelling, hut," used in the Vulgate, is glossed as cauanna. An Italian manuscript of ca. 800 containing scholia on Juvenal's satires (Leiden University Library VLQ 18) defines the word poseucha (a Jewish meeting place for prayer) as "casula pauperum i. cabanna" ("a cottage of the poor, i.e., cabanna"). See also cabana, cabinet entry 1.

Verb

derivative of cabin entry 1

First Known Use

Noun

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a(1)

Verb

1586, in the meaning defined at intransitive sense

Phrases Containing cabin

• cabin boy
• cabin car
• cabin class
• cabin cruiser
• cabin fever
• log cabin
• pressure cabin

Rhymes for cabin

• graben

Kids Definition

cabin

noun

cab·​in

ˈkab-ən

1

a

: a small private room on a ship

b

: a compartment below deck on a small boat for passengers or crew

c

: a compartment (as in an airplane, airship, or spacecraft) for cargo, crew, or passengers

2

: a small simple dwelling usually having only one story