furniture
Americannoun
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furniture
plural
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the movable articles, as tables, chairs, desks or cabinets, required for use or ornament in a house, office, or the like.
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fittings, apparatus, or necessary accessories for something.
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equipment for streets and other public areas, as lighting standards, signs, benches, or litter bins.
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Also called bearer, dead metal. Printing. pieces of wood or metal, less than type high, set in and about pages of type to fill them out and hold the type in place in a chase.
noun
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the movable, generally functional, articles that equip a room, house, etc
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the equipment necessary for a ship, factory, etc
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printing lengths of wood, plastic, or metal, used in assembling formes to create the blank areas and to surround the type
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the wooden parts of a rifle
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obsolete the full armour, trappings, etc, for a man and horse
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the attitudes or characteristics that are typical of a person or thing
the furniture of the murderer's mind
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informal someone or something that is so long established in an environment as to be accepted as an integral part of it
he has been here so long that he is part of the furniture
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of furniture
1520–30; < French fourniture, derivative of fournir to furnish
Explanation
The chairs, tables, sofas, and beds in your house are furniture. Your furniture gives you somewhere to sit, store your books, and a comfortable place to sleep at night. Furniture can be defined as the things in your house that you can move around — you can rearrange the furniture in your living room to make room for a piano, for example. Humans have been building and using some form of furniture for thousands of years. Furniture comes from the Middle French fourniture, "a supply," or "an act of furnishing."
Vocabulary lists containing furniture
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
She delayed a housewarming party for her new apartment because she was too busy chasing swarms to buy furniture.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
Indonesian authorities raided a prison outside Jakarta Wednesday where inmates have allegedly been paying to live in luxury, emptying several "villas" of furniture, bottles of alcohol and at least one big-screen TV.
From Barron's ● Sep. 30, 2026
My parents had the good sense to say, “Yeah, we’ll have to save up for that,” if they needed a new car or furniture, or a house repair.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 26, 2026
There was the failed search engine, the closed charity, the cheap furniture line and the mortgage company launched right before the housing bubble burst.
From Salon ● Sep. 24, 2026
His furniture is overstuffed leather chairs and colorful rugs and photos on the walls.
From "The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman" by Gennifer Choldenko
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
