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

Back kitchens come with as many names as they do appliances: the dirty kitchen, the messy kitchen, the prep kitchen, the working kitchen and the scullery kitchen, to name a few.

From Seattle Times ● Sep. 26, 2022

A cruel stepmother reduces her dead husband’s only child to the role of scullery maid, but a kindly beggar woman and some helpful mice bring about a change in the young woman’s fortunes.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 26, 2019

When I rose from the bath and stepped into the robe Mandy held for me, I was no longer a scullery maid but the equal of anyone at Char’s ball.

From "Ella Enchanted" by Gail Carson Levine

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

He next went into the kitchen and the sculleries and locked the outer doors in that quarter.

From The Lion's Share by Bennett, Arnold

Let all the offices, whence any noise or smell can arise, be perfectly detached from the dwelling part of the mansion:—such as the kitchens, sculleries, laundries, &c.

From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 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)

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

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