(Also, in earlier use, common-chamber, used both for this and for combination-room.)

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  1.  In a college, school, or similar institution, a room to which all the members of the staff have common access, and where they meet each other. Especially, at Oxford, where this use of the name originated, the college-parlour to which the fellows and others associated with them retire after dinner. Hence the members of this room, as a body.

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  In some colleges, etc., the undergraduates or students support a similar institution, called a Junior Common-room.

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  c. 1670.  Wood, Ath. Oxon. (ed. Gutch), 518. Trinity Coll., Oxford. Much about the same time, 1665, was a Common Chamber made up out of a lower room belonging to a Fellow … to the end that the Fellows might meet together … mostly for society sake, which before was at each chamber by turns. And this was done in imitation of other Colleges, that had begun before, of which Merton College was the first, anno 1661.

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1671–2.  Jun. Bursar, Trin. Coll. Camb., in Willis and Clark, 385. For strings and mending ye violls in ye common chamber. Ibid. (1674–5), 383. 24 chaires for the Common Chamber.

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1683.  Contract New Coll. Oxf., 12 April, in Wood, Ath. Oxon. (ed. Gutch), 197. And shall erect a wall with Battlements on the Masters Common Roome answerable to the wall and Battlements of the other side.

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1708.  Hudson, in Hearne, Collect., 3 Aug. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), II. 124. My Service to all ye Common-room.

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1711.  Hearne, ibid., III. 154. The Common-room say there ’tis silly, dull stuff.

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1750.  Coventry, Pompey Litt., II. x. (1785), 69/2. To convene all the fellows in the common-room.

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1803.  Edin. Rev., II. 252. They made him the delight of the common-room.

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1823.  De Quincey, Lett. to Young Man, iii. Wks. 1890, X. 37. Cases … where a particular study … was pursued throughout a whole college simply because a man of talents had talked of it in the junior common-room.

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1886.  Morley, Pattison’s Mem., in Crit. Misc., III. 150. Pattison never stayed in the common-room later than eight in the evening.

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  b.  attrib., as in common-room man, a servant in attendance on the common-room.

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1853.  E. Bradley (C. Bede), Verdant Green, iv. (ed. 4), 29. Old John, the Common-room man.

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  2.  (As two words.) A room common to all; esp. the public room of an inn, etc.

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1766.  Goldsm., Vic. W., xxxi. Our joy reached even to the common room, where the prisoners themselves sympathised.

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1816.  Scott, Tales Landl., Introd. In the common room of the Wallace Inn.

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