ballroom

ballroom — noun

1. a spacious indoor hall, often inside a hotel or grand house, where guests gather

1.nounB2
Definition

a spacious indoor hall, often inside a hotel or grand house, where guests gather to dance at formal events such as weddings, galas, and balls.

Example

The hotel ballroom was decorated with white roses for Mei-ling's wedding reception.

noun + decorated with for [event]

Amara led her daughter onto the ballroom floor for the first dance of the evening.

collocation: ballroom floor

Common collocations
  • grand ballroom
  • hotel ballroom
  • palace ballroom
  • ballroom floor
  • book the ballroom
  • decorate the ballroom
Synonyms
  • dance hall

    less formal; suggests a public venue rather than a hotel or palace room

  • banquet hall

    wider use — for large meals as well as dancing

  • function room

    neutral British term for any large hireable room, not specifically for dancing

Usage Note

Subject is usually a building (hotel, palace, hall) or an event held inside one. Frequently appears with adjectives like 'grand', 'hotel', 'palace', or 'old', and with verbs of hosting ('hold', 'host', 'book') rather than ordinary 'use'.

Common Mistakes

We danced in the ballroom of the small cafe.
We danced in the small cafe.
a ballroom is a large formal hall, not any room where dancing happens.

2. a category of partner dances — including the waltz, tango, foxtrot, and quickste

2.nounC1
Definition

a category of partner dances — including the waltz, tango, foxtrot, and quickstep — performed to set steps and rhythms, often at competitions or social events.

Example

Omar has been learning ballroom since he was nine and now teaches younger children.

uncountable: learn ballroom (no article)

Vesna prefers Latin styles, but his sister competes in ballroom every summer.

collocation: compete in ballroom

Common collocations
  • learn ballroom
  • teach ballroom
  • compete in ballroom
  • ballroom and Latin
  • take up ballroom
Synonyms
Antonyms
  • Latin

    the contrasting competition category covering salsa, samba, cha-cha, and rumba

Usage Note

Uncountable in this sense — never 'a ballroom' or 'ballrooms'. Distinguish from sense 1 (a physical room): if you can replace the word with 'ballroom dancing' and the sentence still works, it is sense 2.

Common Mistakes

She studies a ballroom at the academy.
She studies ballroom at the academy.
as a dance style it is uncountable and takes no article.

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

All four name a large indoor space where people gather, but they differ in setting and purpose. A ballroom is the most formal — a stately hall inside a hotel, palace, or country house, designed with a polished floor and chandeliers for waltzes and grand receptions. A dance hall is more public and less elegant: a paid-entry venue where ordinary people meet to dance, especially in mid-twentieth-century usage. A banquet hall foregrounds dining; the same space may host dancing afterwards, but its main job is seating guests at large tables for a meal. A function room is the neutral British term for any hireable room used for parties, meetings, or wedding lunches, with no implication of grandeur. So you book the ballroom for a chandelier-lit gala, a function room for the office Christmas party.

ballroom ↗dance hallbanquet hallfunction room

Common collocations

Nouns

  • ballroom dancing
  • ballroom floor
  • ballroom dancer
  • hotel ballroom
  • grand ballroom

Phrases

  • hold an event in the ballroom
  • the ballroom was full
  • decorate the ballroom

Prepositions

  • in the ballroom
  • into the ballroom
  • across the ballroom

Etymology

Late LatinFrenchEnglish

A straightforward compound: 'ball' (a formal social dance event) plus 'room'. The 'ball' here came into English in the late 1500s from French 'bal', itself from Late Latin 'ballare' meaning 'to dance', not from the round-object 'ball' of Old English. 'Ballroom' is first recorded in English in the late 1700s, when grand country houses began setting aside specific rooms for these formal dancing parties.