drawer

[drawr, draw-er]

noun

1. a sliding, lidless, horizontal compartment, as in a piece of furniture, that may be drawn draw 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.

drawer

/ 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

Other Word Forms

• predrawer noun
• redrawer noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of drawer¹

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

Idioms and Phrases

see top drawer.

Example Sentences

Ryder locked his phone in a drawer and entered what he calls "a state of depression".

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Kate, picking through her desk drawers, finds sufficient articles to improvise an outfit for the new chief executive, one that makes her look acceptably, if temporarily, elegant.

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Asked how things were going, one delegate sent back a clip from a famous Egyptian soap opera that showed a hapless boss pointlessly opening and closing the lids and drawers of his desk.

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Large language models can now parse electronic medical records—digital junk drawers of unstructured doctor’s and nurse’s notes—into clean, structured data sets that are easier to analyze.

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Your old smartphones and laptops—collecting dust in a drawer—contain a valuable metal that many companies are desperate to reclaim.

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