drawer

American  

[drawr, draw-er] / drɔr, ˈdrɔ ər /

noun

• drawers
  plural

1. a sliding, lidless, horizontal compartment, as in a piece of furniture, that may be drawn out in order to gain access to it.

2. (used with a plural verb) drawers, an undergarment, with legs, that covers the lower part of the body.

3. a person or thing that draws.

4. Finance. a person who draws an order, draft, or bill of exchange.

5. Metalworking. a person who operates a drawbench.

6. a tapster.

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drawer British  

/ ˈdrɔːə /

noun

1. a person or thing that draws, esp a draughtsman

2. a person who draws a cheque See draw

3. a person who draws up a commercial paper

4. archaic a person who draws beer, etc, in a bar

5. a boxlike container in a chest, table, etc, made for sliding in and out

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drawer Idioms  

1. see top drawer.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• predrawer
  noun
• redrawer
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• drawers
  plural

Etymology

Origin of drawer

1300–50, 1580–90 drawer for def. 1, 1560–70 drawer for def. 2; Middle English; see draw, -er ¹

Explanation

A drawer is a sliding compartment that fits into a dresser and is used for storage. You might keep socks in one drawer and t-shirts in another. Dressers have drawers, and so do other pieces of furniture, including desks, bureaus, and kitchen cabinets. Your kitchen drawers might be full of silverware, while the drawers in your office are a jumble of pens, paper clips, and Post-It notes. Drawer comes from the verb draw, from its "pull" meaning — the original idea of the word was that it's a container that's "drawn" out of a cabinet.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

drawer drawers

And then there was MapQuest — another artifact safely filed away in the same early-2000s drawer as Freedom Fries — which announced, simply, “We’re not changing it.”

From Salon ● Sep. 2, 2026

The Austin, Texas, chaplain keeps the plastic passport in a dresser drawer.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026

Rare dinosaur bone, stuck in a drawer for decades.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 30, 2026

Elon Musk probably has a T-shirt in the back of a drawer emblazoned with the line.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 29, 2026

This illuminated the entire room, and now Mother saw that, in addition to the makeshift bed and books, there was a drawer on the floor holding several items of neatly folded clothing.

From "City Spies" by James Ponti

Don’t forget to capture high-value items in drawers and closets.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2026

I spent some of the newfound time poking in drawers, filing cabinets and closets.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 8, 2026

Inside the workshop are various drawers and boxes labelled "teeth"or "eyeballs".

From BBC ● Jul. 17, 2026

No pet dragons, though — just a baby unicorn, representing the fantasy mascot ruling many of that era’s pre-teen accessory drawers.

From Salon ● Jun. 24, 2026

If Nan was searching for fun in the silverware drawers, we’d be packing up sooner than I thought.

From "Hope Springs" by Jaime Berry