Why do they call military housing 'quarters'?

Love etymology! OK - let's start with the Roman Legions. The soldiers on march always set up their camps in exactly the same way - divided into four sections with the officers and certain other items in the middle - hence quarters! A drawing illustrates this layout. read more

It is this meaning, denoting a part of a settlement where a certain group lived, that came to inform the word quartermaster (originally, a person who oversaw the stocking of a ship's hold) with the location-based aspects in addition to its rations-based aspects. From there the sense of quarters as military housing comes. read more

The military portion is the military quarters, just like the French part of town is the French Quarter, as in New Orleans. A smaller and smaller area will suffice as one's personal quarters, until quarters comes to mean lodging in general, though with a military connotation. read more

Family housing provides members of the military a significant benefit. It is an expensive one--costing about $10 billion annually--and will likely become even more so as aging sets of quarters are renovated or replaced at an estimated cost of $20 billion. read more