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Decoded: What an 'Office' Really Is

It's Rookie Roosts Week 2012, and so our Brokerbabble Glossary continues, wherein we take words or phrases that seem to show up in an unreasonable number of listings (and, um, blogs) and decipher their true meanings. If you have any ideas for us, send them to the super-secret tipline. Today's word: Office (see also: Study).

Plug "office" into Zillow.com when searching Boston listings, and pages upon pages of condos, townhouses and single-families pop up. "Office"—or its more Albion cousin, "study"—usually appears in listings offering at least 2 bedrooms. It's there to denote size and scope, to show that an home is so darn big it has a room set aside for you, your cigars, your standing globe done in that deliberately faded yellow hue so as to mimic 19th-century maps of the British empire, and, of course, your books, if you have any left in this digital age. Really, 99 percent of the time an office is merely—and happily—an extra bedroom, which can magically also become a "nursery" or "bar" or "mancave." The new $2.379M listing above, smackdab in the South End/Back Bay borderlands (SoBaBa!), just comes right out and says it has an "office/guest room." It's got nothing to prove.

· Listing: 27 Braddock Park, #1 [Zillow]
· Rookie Roosts Week 2012 [Curbed Boston]
· Our ongoing Brokerbabble Glossary [Curbed]