gallery

pronunciation

How to pronounce gallery in British English: UK [ˈɡæləri] word uk audio image

How to pronounce gallery in American English: US [ˈɡæləri] word us audio image

Noun:

spectators at a golf or tennis match
a porch along the outside of a building (sometimes partly enclosed)
a room or series of rooms where works of art are exhibited
a long usually narrow room used for some specific purpose
a covered corridor (especially one extending along the wall of a building and supported with arches or columns)
narrow recessed balcony area along an upper floor on the interior of a building; usually marked by a colonnade
a horizontal (or nearly horizontal) passageway in a mine

Word Origin

gallery: gallery: [15] The original meaning of gallery in English was ‘long roofed walk way along the wall of a building’; the present sense ‘room or building for the exhibition of paintings, sculpture, etc’ did not develop until the end of the 16th century. English borrowed the word from Old French galerie ‘portico’, which came via Italian galleria from medieval Latin galeria. This may have been an alteration of galilea (source of English galilee [16], as in galilee chapel), thought to have been applied to a porch or chapel at the far or western end of a church in allusion to the position of Galilee as the province of Palestine most distant from Jerusalem.

gallery (n.): mid-15c., "covered walk or passageway, narrow and partly open passageway along a wall," from Old French galerie "a long portico" (14c.), from Medieval Latin galeria, of unknown origin. Perhaps an alteration of galilea "church porch," which is probably from Latin Galilaea "Galilee," the northernmost region of Palestine (see Galilee); church porches sometimes were so called, perhaps from being at the far end of the church: Super altare Beatæ Mariæ in occidentali porte ejusdem ecclesiæ quæ Galilæ a vocatur. [c.1186 charter in "Durham Cathedral"] Sense of "building to house art" first recorded 1590s. In reference to theaters, of the section with the highest, cheapest seats; hence "people who occupy a (theater) gallery" (contrasted with "gentlemen of the pit") first by Lovelace, 1640s, hence to play to the gallery (1867).