The musical Cabaret was titled after an old-fashioned term for “nightclub” as it was set in one. The term was borrowed from French in the mid-seventeenth century, where it originally meant “tavern”. The origin of the term is uncertain, but it is believed to have come from the Middle Dutch cambret, which had the same meaning. Cambret is likely a diminutive of the Old French word for “chamber”, cambre (also the root of our modern word chamber), which traces back to the Latin word camera, used to describe rooms with arched ceilings (originating from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “bend”). There is also a plant genus called cabaret, but it seems to have no connection to the nightclub term, possibly deriving from the Latin cobretum, used for a type of flower in the rush family.
