bench

Pluralbenches

Formsbenches, benching, benched

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A long seat, with or without a back, for several people, such as those found in parks and schools.

   An old wooden bench overlooks the duck pond.

   Visitors rested on the benches lining the museum hallway.

   Note

   The seat that every other meaning grows out of, handed down from Old English benċ and, before that, a Germanic *bankiz naming the same piece of furniture. It seats several people side by side, which is why it can stretch remarkably far: Scarborough station's restored bench runs 139 meters. Courts, parliaments, sports sidelines and workshops all borrowed the word from this plain object.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The seat in a court of law where the judges sit.

   Both attorneys were called to the bench for a quiet word with the judge.

   The judge stepped down from the bench and walked over to the jury box to look at the exhibit.

   Note

   Every legal meaning of the word starts from this piece of courtroom furniture. Because judges sit there, the bench came to stand for the judiciary as a body and for a judge's office. So stepping down from the bench can be read two ways: a judge who leaves the seat to examine an exhibit is still a judge, while one who steps down in the figurative sense has left the job.

3. 3
   nounfiguratively

   The people who decide on a verdict, considered collectively; the judiciary.

   Like saying 'the White House' to mean the president and staff: a place name standing for the people who work there.

   The bench questioned both attorneys sharply during oral argument.

   The full bench ruled unanimously in the company's favor.

   Similarcourt, judiciary

   Note

   Judges taken together, named after the seat they occupy in court. Rulings are said to come from the bench, and the full bench means every judge of a court sitting at once. A bench trial is decided by a judge with no jury. Keep it apart from the judge's office: here the bench is a body of people that can question, rule and disagree.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A horizontal padded surface, usually adjustable in height and angle and often fitted with a weight rack, used to keep proper posture during exercise.

   She adjusted the bench to a slight incline before her next set.

   Each station in the weight room includes a bench and a set of dumbbells.

   Note

   Exercise equipment with its own vocabulary: the bench is set flat or at an incline and often paired with a power rack. Lou Schuler, in his foreword to Nate Green's Built for Show (2008), recalls having "no bench or power rack" and starting every lift from the floor. The bench press is named for this apparatus, and that compound, not this noun, gives the lifting verb.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A sturdy table or surface where assembly or hand work is done; a workbench.

   The jeweler bent over her bench, setting a tiny stone into the ring.

   Half-finished birdhouses covered the bench in his workshop.

   Similarworkbench

6. 6
   nouncountable

   The seating area where substitute players and coaches sit while not taking part in the game.

   After his third foul, he spent the rest of the quarter on the bench.

   The injured goalkeeper watched from the bench as her replacement warmed up.

   Note

   Sports reporting uses the word mostly in fixed phrases. Players start on the bench, come off the bench as substitutes, or are left there: Phil McNulty's BBC report of 2011 notes that Chelsea "left Didier Drogba on the bench" in favor of Fernando Torres. By extension the bench is the substitutes themselves, and a coach clearing the bench sends them all on.

7. 7
   verbtransitive

   To remove a player from active play during a game.

   The manager benched the slumping shortstop for the weekend series.

   Coaches sometimes bench star players to rest them before the playoffs.

   Similarsideline

   Oppositestart (entry)

   Note

   Coaches use it bluntly and often in the passive: a player is benched, or simply told "You're benched!", as a hockey coach shouts in Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea (2016). The reason can be injury, poor form, discipline or rest. Sideline is a close synonym, and the verb travels into offices as benching someone at work.

8. 8
   verbcolloquialtransitive or intransitive

   To lift a given weight by performing a bench press.

   By the end of the season, he could bench 250 pounds.

   She benches on Mondays and squats on Thursdays.

   Similarpress, lift

   Note

   A gym clipping of bench press, the lift named for the padded exercise bench. It takes the weight as its object (he can bench 150 pounds) or stands alone for doing the lift at all. Frederick C. Hatfield, writing in Ironman in 1988, admits that early in his powerlifting career he "couldn't bench too well". It is colloquial, at home in gym talk.

9. 9
   nouncountable

   The weight a person is able to bench press, especially their maximum lift.

   Her bench improved more slowly than her squat over the winter.

   The recruiter asked whether his bench had reached 300 pounds yet.

   Note

   The clipped verb turned back into a noun, and the number lifters compare: what's your bench? It usually means a one-repetition maximum and sits beside squat and deadlift, the other two lifts contested in powerlifting. Like the verb, it is gym shorthand, and progress is counted a few pounds at a time.

10. 10
    nouncountable

    A seat on which a group of people sit together while acting in an official capacity.

    The five commissioners filed in and took their places at the bench before the public hearing opened.

    In the old meeting house, the selectmen had their own bench at the front, apart from the townspeople.

    Note

    Courts are only one of the bodies that sit on a bench. Commissioners at a public hearing, selectmen at the front of an old meeting house and members of a parliamentary chamber do too. The shift that turns the judges' seat into a name for the judiciary works the same way here. The word can mean the officeholders as a group, the place they occupy, or the standing that seat confers.

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