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

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Etymology

Origin of scullery

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

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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

The sloth’s nubbly nylon “fur” does the scrubbing, its front paws grasp a handy hanging cord and a wan, stitched-in half smile serves as a reminder that the scullery duty is only temporary.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 1, 2023

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

Finally she reached the bottommost floor, which was the domain of the cook, the scullery maids, and the laundresses.

From "The Hidden Gallery" by Maryrose Wood

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

The kitchens, pantries, and sculleries are all on the same extensive scale, and fitted with all the large culinary requisites of first-class hotels.

From Man on the Ocean A Book about Boats and Ships by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

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 W. C. (William Charles) Scully

It is also forbidden to use the kitchens, sculleries, or cellars for sleeping rooms, unless specially permitted by the police.

From Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Volume 2 by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Your deeds got into extemporised strong-rooms made of kitchens and sculleries, and fretted all the fat out of their parchments into the banking-house air.

From A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

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