chapter

• chaptre (obsolete)

Middle English chapiter, from Old French chapitre, from Latin capitulum (“a chapter of a book, in Medieval Latin also a synod or council”), diminutive of caput (“a head”); see chapiter and capital, which are doublets of chapter.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃæptə/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃæptɚ/

• Audio (US)

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chapter (plural chapters)

1. (authorship) One of the main sections into which the text of a book is divided.

   Detective novel writers try to keep up the suspense until the last chapter.

   • 1907, Robert William Chambers, chapter VIII, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, OCLC 24962326:

     At her invitation he outlined for her the succeeding chapters with terse military accuracy ; and what she liked best and best understood was avoidance of that false modesty which condescends, turning technicality into pabulum.

2. A section of a social or religious body.
   1. An administrative division of an organization, usually local to a specific area.
   2. An assembly of monks, or of the prebends and other clergymen connected with a cathedral, conventual, or collegiate church, or of a diocese, usually presided over by the dean.
   3. A community of canons or canonesses.
   4. A bishop's council.
   5. An organized branch of some society or fraternity, such as the Freemasons.

      (Can we find and add a quotation of Robertson to this entry?)

   6. A meeting of certain organized societies or orders.
   7. A chapter house.

      (Can we find and add a quotation of Burrill to this entry?)

3. A sequence (of events), especially when presumed related and likely to continue.
   • 1866, Wilkie Collins, Armadale, Book the Last, Chapter I,

     "You know that Mr. Armadale is alive," pursued the doctor, "and you know that he is coming back to England. Why do you continue to wear your widow's dress?" ¶ She answered him without an instant's hesitation, steadily going on with her work. ¶ "Because I am of a sanguine disposition, like you. I mean to trust to the chapter of accidents to the very last. Mr. Armadale may die yet, on his way home."

   • 1911, Bram Stoker, chapter 26, in The Lair of the White Worm:

     […] she determined to go on slowly towards Castra Regis, and trust to the chapter of accidents to pick up the trail again.

4. A decretal epistle.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Ayliffe to this entry?)

5. (obsolete) A location or compartment.
   • (Can we date this quote?) William Shakespeare

     In his bosom! In what chapter of his bosom?

• overarching

• chapter in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• chapter in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

chapter (third-person singular simple present chapters, present participle chaptering, simple past and past participle chaptered)

1. To divide into chapters.
2. To put into a chapter.
3. (military, with "out") To use administrative procedure to remove someone.
   • 2001, John Palmer Hawkins, Army of Hope, Army of Alienation: Culture and Contradiction in the American Army Communities of Cold War Germany‎, page 117:

     If you're a single parent [soldier] and you can't find someone to take care of your children, they will chapter you out [administrative elimination from the service]. And yet if you use someone not certified, they get mad.

   • 2006, Thomas R. Schombert, Diaries of a Soldier: Nightmares from Within‎, page 100:

     "He also wanted me to give you a message. He said that if you don't get your shit ready for this deployment, then he will chapter you out of his freakin' army."

4. (transitive) To take to task.

• carpeth, chaptre, patcher, preacht, repatch