scullery

American  

[skuhl-uh-ree, skuhl-ree] / ˈskʌl ə ri, ˈskʌl ri /

noun

Chiefly British.

sculleries plural

1. a small room or section of a pantry in which food is cleaned, trimmed, and cut into cooking portions before being sent to the kitchen.

2. a small room or section of a pantry or kitchen in which cooking utensils are cleaned and stored.

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scullery British  

/ ˈskʌlərɪ /

noun

1. a small room or part of a kitchen where washing up, vegetable preparation, etc is done

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• sculleries
  plural

Etymology

Origin of scullery

1300–50; Middle English squillerye < Middle French escuelerie, equivalent to escuele dish (< Latin scutella, diminutive of scutra pan) + -rie -ry

Explanation

You're most likely to see the word scullery in an English novel, since it's a small room off the kitchen, usually in a very old, very British home. In the old days, maids cleaned dishes and utensils — and sometimes clothing — in the scullery, out of sight of their wealthy employers. In some parts of Britain, the word scullery is still used to mean "kitchen," although few people would claim to employ a "scullery maid," or a low-ranking member of a household staff. The root of the word is in doubt, but it probably comes from the Latin word for wooden platter, scutra, or the Old Norse skola, "to wash."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

scullery sculleries

"It'd be nice for me to do something completely different. I'd love to do a comedy or I'd like to be a scullery maid in the kitchens in a period drama."

From BBC ● Mar. 2, 2026

Dunk and Egg’s camaraderie fits the same tradition, proposing scullery maids can become queens.

From Salon ● Feb. 23, 2026

One day she fell into conversation with a street musician after giving him some money and he encouraged her to follow his example, saying it would likely pay more than her scullery job.

From Seattle Times ● May 5, 2023

Creaky, cozy and atmospheric, it has wide-plank floors covered in rush matting, a scullery with a Belfast sink skirted with linen and a cabinet that once held powdered wigs.

From New York Times ● Mar. 16, 2021

I thought about Sara Crewe in A Little Princess, pretending she is a prisoner in the Bastille to make her work as a scullery maid more bearable.

From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein

For the first time, some of the men who had toiled anonymously in the palace sculleries stepped into the throne room.

From Time Magazine Archive

A little flight of irregular steps leading out of the big room on to the first floor, where the housekeeper lived in state, gave access to the further rooms near the kitchen and sculleries.

From The Necromancers by Benson, Robert Hugh

They passed through the hall; thence down a stone stairway into an ample vaulted kitchen, and thence along a slate-flagged corridor flanked by sculleries, larders and other kitchen offices.

From News from the Duchy by Quiller-Couch, Arthur Thomas, Sir

We then inspect the offices for the Clerk of the Course himself; wine-cellars, beer-cellars, larders, sculleries, and kitchens, all as gigantically appointed, and as copiously furnished as if they formed part of an ogre's castle.

From Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 15, August, 1851 by Various

Outside the sculleries of the large hotels, or where banquets had been held, barrels of 'feast fragments used to be set.

From Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer by Scully, W. C. (William Charles)

Related Words

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