armoire
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English
Alternative forms
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from Middle French armoire. Doublet of ambry, armarium, and almirah.
Pronunciation
Noun
armoire (plural armoires)
- A type of cupboard, cabinet, or wardrobe, originally used for storing weapons.
- 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter VIII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
- The furnishing of this Blue Room was solid and Victorian, it having been the GHQ of my Uncle Tom's late father, who liked things substantial. There was a four-poster bed, a chunky dressing-table, a massive writing table, divers chairs, pictures on the walls of fellows in cocked hats bending over females in muslin and ringlets and over at the far side a cupboard or armoire in which you could have hidden a dozen corpses.
- 1991, Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho, London: Picador, →ISBN, page 244:
- Downing the drink in a single gulp, I move over to the Anatolian white-oak armoire where I keep a brand-new nail gun I bought last week at a hardware store near my office in Wall Street.
- 2002, Edith Grossman, transl., chapter 1, in Living to Tell the Tale, translation of original by Gabriel García Márquez:
- She got up without lighting the lamp, felt around in the armoire for an archaic revolver that no one had fired since the War of a Thousand Days, and located in the darkness not only the place where the door was but also the exact height of the lock.
Derived terms
French
Etymology
Inherited from Old French armaire, aumaire, borrowed from Latin armārium, from arma (“weapons, tools”).
Pronunciation
Noun
armoire f (plural armoires)
- wardrobe (British), closet (US), a cabinet, taller than it is wide, for storing things.
- (colloquial) a very stocky man
Derived terms
Descendants
- Louisiana Creole: larmwa (via le armoire)
- Seychellois Creole: larmwar (via le armoire)
- → English: armoire
- Sicilian: armuarra, muarra
Further reading
- “armoire”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.