furniture

[fur-ni-cher]

noun

1. the movable articles, as tables, chairs, desks or cabinets, required for use or ornament in a house, office, or the like.

2. fittings, apparatus, or necessary accessories for something.

3. equipment for streets and other public areas, as lighting standards, signs, benches, or litter bins.

4. 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.

furniture

/ ˈfɜːnɪtʃə /

noun

1. the movable, generally functional, articles that equip a room, house, etc

2. the equipment necessary for a ship, factory, etc

3. printing lengths of wood, plastic, or metal, used in assembling formes to create the blank areas and to surround the type

4. the wooden parts of a rifle

5. obsolete,  the full armour, trappings, etc, for a man and horse

6. the attitudes or characteristics that are typical of a person or thing

   the furniture of the murderer's mind

7. 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

8. See door furniture street furniture

Other Word Forms

• furnitureless adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of furniture¹

1520–30; < French fourniture, derivative of fournir to furnish

Word History and Origins

Origin of furniture¹

C16: from French fourniture , from fournir to equip, _furnish

Example Sentences

Her father was a successful photographer and her mother designed clothes and furniture.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Charred furniture, lecterns and smoky curls of carpet are piled around the entrance - its guts emptied, and debris cleared, in time for Friday prayers.

Read more on BBC

And because bananas go bad quickly, companies are generally unable to build up large inventories ahead of tariffs the way some did with electronics or furniture.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Getting rid of the invasive furniture proves bizarrely difficult.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Many familiar items, from plastic squeeze bottles to outdoor furniture, rely on a process that converts propane into propylene.

Read more on Science Daily

Related Words

• appliance 
• bed 
• bookcase 
• chair 
• couch 
• desk 
• equipment 
• goods 
• sofa 
• table