armoire

English

Alternative forms

• armoir (dated)

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɑːmˈwɑː/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ɑɹmˈwɑɹ/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)

Noun

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

• jewellery armoire

French

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /aʁ.mwaʁ/

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

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

• armoire à glace
• armoire à pharmacie

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 [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.