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

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Etymology

Origin of drawer

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

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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

King Slide Works makes components like cabinet hinges and drawer slides.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026

Keep your rental paperwork in your top drawer.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 21, 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

Janie pushed back from the table, found an oven mitt in the drawer, and pulled the tray of bread out of the oven.

From "A Boy Called Bat" by Elana K. Arnold

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

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2026

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

From BBC ● Jul. 17, 2026

Chatrie asks whether the Constitution still remembers that lesson once the rummaging happens through data instead of drawers.

From Slate ● May 20, 2026

Previously, rulings were made based on the nature of the maps themselves, rather than the intent of their drawers.

From Salon ● May 16, 2026

I dig through the kitchen drawers in search of a thermometer but come up empty.

From "South of Somewhere" by Kalena Miller

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