furniture
- 1Large movable items in a room that improve it, either functionally or decoratively, such as chairs, tables, and beds.
The apartment came partly equipped with furniture from the previous tenant.
Designers arranged the office furniture to encourage conversation.
Similarfurnishings
Note
The everyday sense behaves as a mass noun. You ask how much furniture is left, not how many, and you count it in pieces of furniture or, idiomatically, a stick of furniture. The plural furnitures exists, but this sense now usually does without it. Behind the word is Middle French fourniture, 'a supply, or the act of furnishing', which is why its older meanings range over gear, clothing and provisions.
- 2The fittings, such as handles and hinges, on a door, coffin, or other wooden item.
Restorers sourced period-correct furniture for the chapel's oak doors.
The undertaker selected silver-plated furniture for the casket.
Similarfittings, hardware, mountings, ironmongery
Note
Here the word means hardware rather than woodwork: the metal fittings fixed to a wooden object, such as handles on a door or a coffin. The idea reaches gunmaking too. Philip Haythornthwaite's British Cavalryman 1792-1815 describes a pistol whose furniture was cut back to a brass trigger guard, with no butt-plate. Keep it apart from the stock and forearm, which are the wooden parts themselves.
- 3Any material on a page other than the body text and pictures: headlines, datelines, dinkuses, lines, and symbols.
Sub-editors finalize the furniture before sending the page to print.
A cluttered layout often has too much furniture competing with the story.
Note
Newsroom jargon for everything on a page that isn't the story or its pictures. Outsiders find it puzzling. Elisabeth Ribbans, writing in 2023 on the perils of journalist jargon, cites a published correction saying 'the original furniture' had misdated a fireworks display. The meaning has also widened over time. It once covered only design elements such as lines and symbols, and now takes in headlines and datelines too.
- 4The harness, trappings, and other equipment fitted to a horse, hawk, or other animal.
A falconer keeps the hawk's furniture (jesses and bells) clean and supple.
The cavalry inspected every mount's furniture before the parade.
Similartack, trappings, harness, gear
Note
Here the word stays close to its French source, fourniture, "a supply": whatever an animal is fitted out with, from saddlecloth to collar and bells. Florio's 1603 Montaigne praises a hawk for her wing, not her bells, and the term lives on in military history, where horse furniture means sheepskin, shabraque and valise. It is usually uncountable: a hawk's furniture, horse furniture.
- 5The stock and forearm of a weapon: the structural parts that the shooter grips and shoulders.
The gunsmith refinished the shotgun's furniture to a deep amber gloss.
Wartime production swapped polished wood furniture for plain, hard-wearing stocks.
Similarwoodwork
Note
Gunsmiths use the word for the parts of a weapon you hold, as opposed to the parts that fire it: the stock against the shoulder and the forearm beneath the barrel. Like the household sense, it is a collective mass noun. A rifle has furniture, not furnitures, and the stock and forearm are thought of together as one set.
- 6Impressive-looking books acquired mainly to fill out the collection of a private library rather than to be read.
The decorator ordered leather-bound furniture to lend the study an air of learning.
Beneath the handsome spines, much of the shelf was mere furniture.
- 7In cricket, a slang word for the stumps, the upright targets the bowler aims to hit.
A perfectly pitched delivery scattered the furniture and ended his innings.
The crowd roared as the spinner disturbed the furniture at the far end.
Note
Commentary slang that comes into play when something happens to the stumps. A delivery that bowls the batter rattles, disturbs or scatters the furniture, and the phrase carries a note of relish at the wreckage. It suits the commentary box and casual cricket talk. Plain stumps remains the neutral word for scorecards and the laws of the game.
- 8A type of mixture stop found on a pipe organ, sounding several high-pitched ranks together.
She added the furniture for the closing voluntary, crowning the chorus with sparkle.
Without the furniture, the full organ sounded weighty but dull.
Note
An organ builder's name for one particular stop, not for the instrument's casework or bench. As a mixture, it sounds several ranks of high-pitched pipes together from a single stop. It reinforces the upper harmonics and adds brilliance to the chorus when drawn over the foundation stops. It is never meant to be heard as a solo voice.
- 9In letterpress printing, the wooden or metal blocks set around pages of type to create the margins and fill the space between the pages and the chase.
The printer fitted lengths of furniture along each edge before tightening the quoins.
Mismatched furniture left an uneven margin down the outer column.
Note
A word from the composing room of hand-set type. Furniture was the spacing material, blocks of wood or metal packed between the pages of type and the chase, the frame that held them. It set the margins and filled every gap so that the forme locked up solid. Because this belongs to letterpress practice, the term now turns up mainly in descriptions of how printing used to be done.
- 10Draped coverings and hangings, such as bedsheets, tablecloths, and tapestries.
She inherited her mother's linen furniture, including fine tablecloths and embroidered sheets.
The great bed's furniture of crimson velvet was the household's chief treasure.
Note
Before the word settled on wooden movables, it also covered the cloth that dressed a house: bed-hangings, tablecloths and tapestries. In older writing, a bed's furniture means its curtains and covers, not its frame. The sense is archaic rather than dead, so a historical novelist can still use it for period color, provided the context makes clear that fabric is meant.
- 11Equipment, apparatus, tools, or instruments used for carrying out work.
The smith kept the furniture of his trade arranged neatly along the forge wall.
Each apprentice was issued the furniture proper to his craft before the term began.
Note
The tools and instruments of a trade, gathered under one word, as in the furniture of a forge or a workshop. The label is archaic rather than obsolete, so the sense can still be used knowingly for an old-fashioned flavor. In ordinary modern prose, equipment, tools or apparatus do the job without the risk of being misread.
- 12An accompanying feature that enhances something, or enhancing features collectively; embellishment, decoration, or trimming.
A Scythian Shepherd, so imbelliſhed With Natures pride, and richeſt furniture? His looks do menace heauen & dare the Gods, His fiery eies are fixt vpon the earth.
c. 1587, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. The First PartNote
Ornament as a finishing touch: the qualities or trimmings that set something off. Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great pairs it with 'embellished', describing a shepherd adorned 'with Nature's pride, and richest furniture'. That means his natural gifts, not anything in a room. Read it this way in Elizabethan verse. In modern prose the sense is obsolete, and readers would hear chairs and tables.
- 13The clothing that makes up a person's outfit.
Note
Clothing seen as an outfit someone has been supplied with, in keeping with the idea of being furnished. The sense is obsolete. A modern sentence about a person's furniture would be heard as a remark about their sofa, so the meaning matters mainly for reading older texts. It treats dress much as the arms-and-armor meaning treats a soldier's kit.
- 14Weapons, armor, and other equipment used in war.
The captain inspected each man's furniture, testing helm, blade, and breastplate in turn.
Carts groaned under the furniture of the besieging army as it advanced on the walls.
Note
The gear a fighter or an army is furnished with for war: weapons, armor and the rest of the martial kit. This sense is obsolete, unlike the firearms sense, which is still current. That narrower use names only the stock and forearm of a single weapon. In an old text, a soldier's furniture means everything he carries into battle.
- 15A stock or supply of stores and provisions.
The steward laid in furniture against the coming siege: grain, salted meat, and casks of ale.
Their furniture ran low long before the relief column reached the fort.
Note
Of all the word's meanings, provisions laid in store sit closest to the Middle French 'a supply' behind the household sense. This one is obsolete. In an older account of a voyage or a siege, the furniture means what was stocked up, not what was sat on. A modern writer would say stores or supplies.
- 16The things contained in something or provided to stock it.
Note
Contents in the widest sense: whatever fills a cabinet, a room or a strongroom. Being obsolete, it can mislead readers of older prose, where the furniture of a cabinet may be its shells and coins rather than its shelves. The test is whether the thing is contained or does the containing. This sense always means what is inside.
- 17The condiments and dressings of a salad.
The recipe insists the furniture be added only at the table, lest the leaves wilt.
A bowl of crisp lettuce waited beside its furniture of mustard, oil, and salt.
Note
A kitchen sense that took the plural: a salad's furnitures were the condiments that dressed it. The plural form is part of what marks this obsolete use. By contrast, the household sense now usually refuses furnitures and stays a mass noun. Meet the plural in an old recipe and it signals oil, vinegar and their companions, not tables.
- 18The action of furnishing or supplying something.
Note
Here the noun names the act itself, the furnishing rather than what is furnished. It matches the French fourniture's 'act of furnishing' directly. This sense is obsolete, and its job passed to furnishing and supply. In an older text, the furniture of a fleet or a garrison usually means the business of supplying it, not its stores.
- 19The state of being well equipped or prepared, or of having a cultivated mind.
Note
A state rather than a stock: being equipped and prepared, and above all being mentally cultivated, with learning pictured as the furnishing of a mind. Phrases like 'a furniture of learning' belong to older literary prose, which kept this figurative use longest. It is obsolete now, so use it only as a deliberate echo of that style.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle French fourniture (“a supply, or the act of furnishing”), from the verb fournir (“to furnish”).