dining-table

English

Noun

dining-table (plural dining-tables)

1. Dated form of dining table.
   • 1864 August – 1866 January, [Elizabeth] Gaskell, “Brightening Prospects”, in Wives and Daughters. An Every-day Story. , volume II, London: Smith, Elder and Co., , published 1866, →OCLC, page 34:

     And he kept shaking Mr. Gibson’s hand all the time till he had placed him, nothing loth, at the well-covered dining-table.

   • 1868, "A Clergyman" (John Morison), Australia in 1866, page 165,

     When gold-digging commenced in California, the writer was staying at an hotel in Wellington, New Zealand, where a Yankee trader was also staying. Seated at the dining-table, the latter was discoursing of the business he was doing .

   • 1884, Julian Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife: A Biography (The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne; XIV), volume I, Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company; Cambridge, Mass.: The Riverside Press, page 369:

     Between the windows looking upon the lake hangs the great looking-glass, over the Pembroke dining-table.

   • 1898, Q. [pseudonym; Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch], “A Pair of Hands: An Old Maid’s Ghost-Story”, in A[rthur] T[homas] Quiller-Couch, editor, The Cornish Magazine, volume I, Truro: Joseph Pollard; London: Service & Paton, , page 420:

     Did I wish the roses renewed in a bowl upon the dining-table, sure enough at the next meal they would be replaced by fresh ones.

   • 1904, Carolyn Wells, “A Tea Club Tea”, in Patty at Home, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, →OCLC, page 139:

     So Patty rested, until Pansy came and called them to a most appetising little lunch spread very simply on the dining-table.

   • 1929 December 28, “Correspondence: A Letter from Oberammergau. ”, in The Spectator, volume 143, number 5296, page 972:

     Local custom gives us an “Advent Tree” or “Advent Wreath”: the trees are diminutive Christmas trees, which bear one candle for each Sunday in Advent; the wreaths are wooden rings with as many holes as there are days before Christmas Eve, decorated with fir green, and gay ribbons, and hung up over the dining-table, one candle being added every night till the circle is complete.

   • 1932, Alec Waugh, That American Woman, page 20:

     He saw marriage as a settling down to the serious business of life; a settling down that was symbolized in the large stuccoed house in St John's Wood Park, with its long mahogany dining-table, its family portraits, its oak-panelled smoking-room, its leather-bound books running in long, dusty rows from floor to ceiling; its drawing-room whose heavily brocaded windows looked out on a trim garden, its thick carpets, its kitchened basement, its high, wide bedrooms, its airy nursery.

   • 1944, Emily Carr, “The House of All Sorts”, in Furniture‎:

     The dining-table, uncollapsible and highly varnished, the piano, the chesterfield, stuffed chairs and a few sofas made a foundation on which to heap lesser articles.

   • 1993, Margaret Yorke [pseudonym; Margaret Beda Nicholson], Dangerous to Know, New York, N.Y.: The Mysterious Press, →ISBN, pages 184 and 203:

     Perhaps, she thought now, polishing Theresa’s dining-table, we could go to some of those people who help you, be counselled; […] “And Hermione’s plate, soiled but with no food on it, as if she had eaten, was on the dining-table,” said Karen, who had seen it.