the.com/roommate
A stranger you signed paperwork to share a bathroom with.
means A person you share a living space — typically a bedroom, apartment, or house — with, often to split the rent.
from A plain English compound of "room" and "mate," both old workhorse words. "Room" descends from Old English "rūm," meaning space, and "mate" comes from Middle Low German or Middle Dutch "māt," originally a companion you shared food with — built from the same root that gives us "meat" in its old sense of food. So a roommate is literally a space-companion. The term itself is an American coinage that took hold in the 19th century, riding the rise of boarding houses and college dormitories.
- word origin
- From Old Norse 'rum,' meaning space or room
- dish debt
- Studies link chore inequity to roommate conflict spikes
- random pairing
- Many lifelong friendships started from algorithmic dorm matches
- shared microbes
- Cohabitants swap skin and gut bacteria within weeks
- rent math
- Roommates cut housing costs by roughly 30 percent
the odd couple — 1968 tv series starring jack klugman and tony randall as mismatched roommates oscar and felix