Roommates

Oh, yes. As to bedmate versus roomate, the former is usually covered by living together.

Um, you might also find these definitions helpful. Or not.

Americans consider it sub-poverty-level to sleep in the same room with someone, outside the college-dorm setting. So we would almost never use “roommate” in your sense.

And “roommate” almost never means “person I am in a sexual, bedsharing relationship with.” I can’t think of a girl I know who wouldn’t be offended to be called a “roommate” by her boyfriend.

I can’t think of a girl I know who wouldn’t be offended to be called a “roommate” by her boyfriend.

To generalize, I can’t think of anyone I know, of either sex, who wouldn’t be offended to be called a “roommate” by a romantic partner, unless there was special reason to emphasize the living arrangements separately from the relationship. (That is, I don’t think many people would be offended by “My girlfriend and I used to have separate apartments, but now we’re roommates.” Even there, “now we’re living together” sounds more typical.)

I don’t think anyone would use “roommate” in the context of a sexual relationship on a regular basis unless the purpose was to conceal that aspect of the relationship, as with referring to one’s same-sex partner as a “roommate.”

This was confusing in grad school. We had separate rooms in which to sleep, but I had to go through my roommate’s room to get out of our living space and she had to go through my room to get to our bathroom. I guess this doesn’t really address your question:), but I thought it was still worthy of note. For sure we just called each other roommates. These were not apartments, but they weren’t the usual dorms either since each 2-3 rooms had their own private bathroom. Or at least we liked to think they were a step up from dorms.

If someone said he had a “housemate”, I would assume that he lived in a building that had been a house, but had been subdivided into two apartments (connected or otherwise) and the two owners/renters collaborate on maintenance and tax issues. Other then that, it is “roommate.”

Now that we’re clear on roommates, could someone please explain to me the “just broke the water pitcher” reference? I always assumed it was a category for making fun of things that were really dumb (so dumb that they made you momentarily lose control of your body and drop the pitcher that you were holding). But now I think that’s not exactly it.

I think #14 is right on “housemate.” I take it to mean that the quarters that are shared are actually a house, rather than an apartment.

There will be usually be several people sharing a house, and consequently some personnel changes over time. Thus, to my mind, there is less of an implication of friendship in “housemate” than in “roommate.” This is a weak distinction, obviously, but I would be more inclined to think that someone’s roommate was also a friend than someone’s housemate. Could be just me.

My mate was rather flat when we first became a couple, but the developed a figure once she went on the Pill.

Actually, I’ve heard “housemate” used fairly often to mean people with whom one shares a (non-divided) house, in the “flatmate” sense. And if I recall correctly, in college, people used “housemate” all the time, even for shared apartments, to distinguish from “roommate” in the shared room sense.

But in general, outside of college shared rooms are not at all common, so “roommate” generally means “flatmate”.

Although we do have “flats” in San Francisco, distinguished from apartments by a separate entrance, so I’ve heard “flatmate” used here as well.

Rob (#1), flat in the sense of apartment is certainly in common use in San Francisco, perhaps because of the nature of the older housing now converted into, well, flats. But I’ve never heard “flatmate.”

Many years ago when I was an undergraduate the word “suitemate” was in use for what Eszter describes. Doubt it still exists.

To me “bedmate” would be a very disparaging term — somewhere between pick-up and slut. Did the original post imply that it was sometimes used more neutrally?

“Suitemate” does still exist in Am. English, at least wherever there are suites (rooms adjoined by common rooms). But in a suite, you can also have a roommate. At my undergrad there were two bedrooms (i.e. dorm rooms) adjoined by a common living room and bathrooms. Whoever shared your bedroom was your “roommate,” and whoever lived in the other bedroom (across the living room) was your “suitemate.”

For people who actually live in houses, I think #18 is right about the “housemate”/”roommate” distinction – “housemate” carries a less personal implication, as in “I live with these people in a ‘group house'” – which, at least in the DC area, tends to mean a bunch of people living together who weren’t friends before, but it’s also not a coop or communal situation. “Roommate” sounds more intimate.

On the sexual partner issue, #11 brings up a good point. People don’t call an SO a “roommate;” they say “We live together” if the issue comes up. Conversely, people who are roommates but not lovers generally don’t say “We live together.”

why do we say “soulmate” but never “heartmate”?

In my particular area of experience with this phenomenon (college and then young-professional life in the western part of Boston), there are several ways of expressing the distinction.

1) suitemate/roommate — in my experience only used in college-owned living situations, never in independently procured apartments.

2) housemate/roommate — perhaps generally used in situations where the landlord sets up the living arrangements, rather than forming a group and then seeking accommodation.

3) roommate/direct roommate — this is the one I haven’t seen mentioned above, and seems to have taken the strongest hold in the world I inhabit. Because as mentioned above, having one’s own room is the norm, the other case is rare enough to warrant the specification ‘direct’ to make the situation clear.

Also, as noted above, ‘bedmate’ is not a term anyone here would ever dream of using.

As Will U at #23 points out:

I used “roommate” until I became tired of explaining that, in fact, I don’t actually room with multiple females. (If only!)

The ambiguousness of “roommate” is sometimes a feature, not a bug. College-era shared housing is the first time most people live with an unrelated member of the opposite sex, so guys especially revel in the unspecified nature of the “roommate” relationship, as it allows them to pretend to sexual experience: “Oh, yeah, her? we were roommates once” – with the hope that the listener draws a flattering conclusion.

“Living together” is rarely used in the same, way as a bluff. “Oh, yeah, we lived together for a year or two.” Which might be literally true, even when the full meaning of “living together” might not be.

I suppose it’s a grammatical construction, but I’ve never hears anyone describe someone as a “bedmate”.

I once encountered an only slightly semi-closeted gay man who came of age before Stonewall and who always referred to his longtime companion as “my roommate.” Everyone, so far as I could tell, understood what their relationship was. I don’t know if the origin of his usage was ironic or simply a convenient euphemism. This is the only time I’ve heard the word used to describe a sexual relationship.

And thanks for the memories of the Princeton Grad College, Eszter. Even at 23, I was too old for the “you walk through my bedroom to go to the bathroom and I’ll walk through your bedroom to exit” system. I got out of there after one year and never looked back (except to go to the D Bar).

re:34. That usage is very common among older guys. “Lover” to them is the person someone cheats with (like with straight people), and “boyfriend” is too juvenile and casual. “Partner” has been growing in usage with older couples, but that sounds too businesslike to many also.

“Living together” is probably the US equivalent of “bedmate” (which i think sounds restrictive and weird, like it’s a sex-only thing and not an actual relationship)

Housemate is rarely used here in NYC, because it’s almost always apartment-sharing–Roommate is the right term, whether you actually share a space or just the whole apt. In the midwest and other places where there are more actual houses, Housemate is a very common term. I’ve only ever heard pretentious people here use “flatmate”(in an attempt to seem more Euro/exotic)

Of course, we are speaking in generalities. There are niche sub-cultures where other norms hold. Among the music underground “garage bands” that I know, musicians often rent large rooms, and then a whole band will live there with their equipment. “Roommate” then means roommate.

In my estimation (US northeast), “housemate” is getting much more commonly used to mean what UK folks would call “flatmate”. While it’s still not as common as “roommate”, it’s common enough that most people will not assume that there is a traditional detached house involved.

Roommate still covers both semantic spaces, and it is be assumed from context (or left ambiguous) whether people actually share a room (common in dorms or large studios a la 38). What will always be assumed is that the partnership is not sexual or romantic, unless “roommate” is being used to hide (or facetiously pretend to hide) that relationship.

As 34/36 mention, it’s fairly common in gay culture (even in the post-stonewall generations, though i’d say it’s declining there) to use roomate in this latter way. Tone or other shibboleths are often used as a signifier to split the semantics. Those who are familiar and comfortable with queer culture will immediately recognize the euphemism and see the comment as facetious, while those who are ignorant of it will be left in the dark.

Michael

I’ve never heard roommate used for people who did not actually share a room, and sharing a room on a long term basis is almost unknown except for lovers, even in the University college system (which often have shared kitchens, but I’ve not heard of shared bedrooms).

The most common situations for use of the term roommate I have found is sharing hotel rooms for conferences and conventions.

Housemate, on the other hand, is used even when the residence is not a free standing house (and may be used inclusive of lovers, but does not carry that connotation). Flatmate is specific to apartments and a little more common.

As a USian and a member of the college class of 1976, I have to agree with cryptic ned. I think “roommate” is taken to mean someone a person rooms with, regardless of the domicile. People sometimes say “housemate,” and admittedly it is more specific (and thus useful in its own way), but when they do I get the feeling they’re perhaps excessively proud of the fact they’re rooming in a house and not an apartment. At any rate, I think it’s just as likely they’d say, “I’m thinking of throwing a party at my house next Saturday, if it’s okay with my roommates” as … the other formulation.

It occurs to me that “housemate” connotes a somewhat cooler relationship than “roommate” — that “roommates” are more likely to have known one another before rooming together (post-college), while “housemates” are the sort of people one picks up through the classifieds or who get thrown together at the whim of a landlord. But others may hear it differently.

Housemate = person with whom you share a house.
Roommate = person with whom you share an apartment OR a room, or both.

No one would ever expect that you are having sex with your roommate, at least not unless there was more evidence than your referring to him or her as “roommate.”

As a UKer, I have housemates (friends I already knew with whom I share an undivided house). I certainly wouldn’t refer to a roomate.

In Cambridge there are “double sets” (usually two bedrooms off a shared lounge), but I can’t remember whether I ever heard the term ‘setmate’ used; I think it would usually be rephrased as ‘we share a set’. Sets, at least in my college, were the older rooms: more recently built (i.e. 60s) rooms were almost always single bedrooms, so the term is falling out of usage.