Definition of CAMARADERIE

Get Friendly With the History of Camaraderie

Camaraderie made its first appearance in English in the middle of the 19th century. It comes from camarade, the French word whose Middle French ancestor was also the source for our word comrade. In Middle French, camarade was used to mean "roommate," "companion," or "a group sleeping in one room." It derived by way of Old Spanish from the Late Latin camera, or camara, meaning "chamber." We also have the word comradery, which means the same thing as camaraderie but did not take the same etymological route as its synonym. That word, formed by attaching the -ry suffix (as found in wizardry and citizenry) to comrade, didn't appear in English until almost 40 years after camaraderie.

Examples of camaraderie in a Sentence

It is about the camaraderie of troops bound for Vietnam who as their leader warns, have one another and nothing but one another when they fall into hell. — Stanley Kauffmann, New Republic, 25 Mar. 2002 … men on the sunny side of middle age, physical, competitive, used to the quick camaraderie of the team, be it a firefighting squad or a trading desk. — Robert Lipsyte, New York Times, 3 Feb. 2002 Except for occasional bursts of camaraderie, which came like thunderstorms, we were never close. — W. P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe, 1982 The best of adolescence was the intense male friendships—not only because of the cozy feelings of camaraderie they afforded … but because of the opportunity they provided for uncensored talk. — Philip Roth, Reading Myself and Others, 1975 There is great camaraderie among the teammates. They have developed a real camaraderie after working together for so long.

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Last Updated

10 Jan 2020

Cite this Entry

“Camaraderie.” The Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Inc., https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/camaraderie. Accessed 19 January 2020.