pump room

plural pump rooms · alternative pumproom · alternative pump-room

1. capitalizedsometimesA room housing a pump, especially a room or structure at a spa where mineral water is drawn from a spring and consumed, formerly often serving as a venue for polite socializing and conversation.First known use 18th c.

   [E]ven the German visitors at the baths honored me by drinking my health in the pump-room.

   1847, Hans Christian Andersen, chapter 7, in Mary Howitt, transl., The True Story of My Life

   3 more examples

   Among those who frequented the pump-room, was an old officer, whose temper, naturally impatient, was, by repeated attacks of the gout, which had almost deprived him of the use of his limbs, sublimated into a remarkable degree of virulence and perverseness […].

   1751, [Tobias] Smollett, chapter 75, in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume II, London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC

   The Great Pump Room is a spacious saloon, ornamented with Corinthian pillars, and a music-gallery, and a Tompion clock, and a statue of Nash, and a golden inscription, to which all the water-drinkers should attend, for it appeals to them in the cause of a deserving charity.

   1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 36, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC

   In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the beautiful people came here for the season, taking the waters, meeting for tea in the Pump Room and for balls in the Assembly Rooms.

   2003 August 10, Jacqueline Friedrich, “Choice Tables: Sophisticated Repasts in Bath”, in New York Times, retrieved 09 Oct 2012