furniture
Americannoun
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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. Also called 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
- furnitureless adjective
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.
The listing images include few personal touches inside the home, capturing gleaming white spaces filled with neutral furniture and decor.
From MarketWatch • Apr. 13, 2026
One, a professor who has lived on the West Coast for decades, has storage spaces in two small upstate New York towns, filled with furniture he had acquired during trips to Asia in the 1980s.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 11, 2026
I had swallowed my pride and agreed to pay him nearly $1,000 to cart away furniture and other large items.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 11, 2026
A North Yorkshire charity working to combat furniture poverty has said it has seen a "big increase" in demand for its services.
From BBC • Apr. 10, 2026
But when she got worked up about something, she tended to take it out on the rugs, floors, and furniture, and any dirt that might be harbored therein.
From "The Detective's Assistant" by Kate Hannigan
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.
