abut

Yukito Ayatsujiの小説 "The Mill House Murders" を読み始めました。　氏の小説は前に "The Decagon House Murders" を読んだので、この本は2冊目です。

The servants' quarters consisted of two rooms to the east of the tower. A narrow corridor separated the two rooms from the kitchen. The northern room--the one closest to the gallery--had been Negishi Fumie's. Kuramoto's room was next to hers. His was a corner room, with two walls abutting the courtyard.

"abutting" は知らない単語なので辞書で調べます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: abut (on/onto) something (of land or a building) to be next to something or to have one side touching the side of something: His land abuts onto a road.
・Collins Dictionary: When land or a building abuts something or abuts on something, it is next to it.: He was born in 1768 in the house abutting our hotel.
・Vocabulary.com: When something borders something else, it is said to abut it. The term is often used in real estate to refer to a lot line. Wouldn’t it be nice to have your back yard abut a forest preserve or park?
The Old French word but meant "end" — think of "butt" for a crude way to remember that! — and it was joined to a-, from the Latin ad- "near to." The result was abuter, which meant "to touch at an end." The word eventually became abouter, meaning "to join at the ends, or border on." The idea of abut suggesting a common boundary comes from the late Middle English, and today we use the word when anything touches something else.