foyer
/ˈfɔɪeɪ
/- As part of the revamp, the unique auditorium will remain, with only technical improvements, but there are plans for two new studios, a workshop, expanded offices, dressing rooms and public foyers, and terrace spaces.
- In addition to new floor finishes and lighting, it features a floating white wall that clads the boundary interfacing the public foyers and the theatres.
- A feature of the theatre is that all the foyer areas and the auditorium are accessible to wheelchairs.
Synonyms
- Mia stood in the foyer of the large house, hanging her coat, scarf and gloves on the coat rack.
- Jay appeared by my side and pulled me into the foyer of the huge house, he led me to a kitchen and handed me a beer.
Origin
Late 18th century (denoting the centre of attention or activity): from French, 'hearth, home', based on Latin focus 'domestic hearth'.
focus from mid 17th century:
In Latin focus meant ‘hearth, fireplace’, and the optical sense of ‘the burning point of a lens’, the point at which rays meet after reflection or refraction, may have developed from this. It was first used in 1604 in Latin in this sense by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630). By the beginning of the 18th century the word had appeared in the writings of such eminent figures as the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), the scientist Robert Boyle (1627–91), and the mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton (1643–1727). The focus groups of modern marketing are much more recent, dating from the early 1960s. Latin focus became foyer in French, in the sense ‘hearth’. It came to be used in French for the ‘green-room’ in a theatre, and then for the area that the public could gather in during intervals, a sense first found in English in 1859. See also fuel