curule chair

American  

noun

1. (in ancient Rome) a folding seat with curved legs and no back, often ornamented with ivory, used only by certain high officials.

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curule chair British  

noun

1. an upholstered folding seat with curved legs used by the highest civil officials of ancient Rome

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Etymology

Origin of curule chair

First recorded in 1775–85

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

curule chair

The solemn, awful, inexorable literary Rhadamanthus, the dread Quarterly Review itself, sitting imposingly on its curule chair in ambrosial bigwig and high-heeled shoes, promulgated edicts against the new-fangled invention.

From Time Magazine Archive

Consuls Madisonius and Monrovious left the seat of office, and Consuls Johannes Quincius, and Andreas, and Martinus, and the rest, followed in their turn, until the good Abraham sat in the curule chair.

From Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes by Brown, E. E.

Again Lentulus was in his curule chair, and again the solemn farce of taking the auspices, preparatory to commencing the session, was gone through.

From A Friend of Caesar A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. by Davis, William Stearns

The legend that this was the curule chair of the senator Pudens is necessarily apocryphal.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 5, Slice 7 "Cerargyrite" to "Charing Cross" by Various

Her seat, as she spoke, might have been a curule chair.

From Coming Home 1916 by Wharton, Edith