armoire

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English

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English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Unadapted borrowing from Middle French armoire. Doublet of ambry, armarium, and almirah.

Pronunciation

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  • (UK) IPA(key): /ɑːmˈwɑː/
  • (US) IPA(key): /ɑɹmˈwɑɹ/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)

Noun

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armoire (plural armoires)

  1. 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

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French

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Etymology

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Inherited from Old French armaire, aumaire, borrowed from Latin armārium, from arma (weapons, tools).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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armoire f (plural armoires)

  1. wardrobe (British), closet (US), a cabinet, taller than it is wide, for storing things.
  2. (colloquial) a very stocky man

Derived terms

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Descendants

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  • Louisiana Creole: larmwa (via le armoire)
  • Seychellois Creole: larmwar (via le armoire)
  • English: armoire
  • Sicilian: armuarra, muarra

Further reading

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