dumbwaiter
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: dumb-waiter and dumb waiter
Alternative forms
Etymology
From dumb (“unable to speak”) + waiter, originally separate words and describing the portable table's inability to relate gossip after the meal. By the use of the term to describe small service elevators in American homes in the 1840s, it simply meant dumb as “mechanical”, “unable to speak at all”.
Pronunciation
Noun
dumbwaiter (plural dumbwaiters)
- A small elevator used to move food etc. from one floor of a building to another.
- 1951, Isaac Jefferson, chapter 9, in Memoirs Of A Monticello Slave, University Of Virginia Press, page 27:
- When writing he had a copyin machine: while he was a-writin he wouldn't suffer nobody to come in his room: had a dumb-waiter: when he wanted anything he had nothin to do but turn a crank and the dumb-waiter would bring him water or fruit on a plate or anything he wanted.
- (obsolete) A table or set of trays on rollers used for serving food.
- 1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter VII, in Great Expectations […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 110:
- Sauces, wines, all the accessories we wanted, and all of the best, were given out by our host from his dumbwaiter; and when they had made the circuit of the table, he always put them back again.
- (obsolete) A lazy Susan.
Translations
small elevator
|
Further reading
dumbwaiter on Wikipedia.Wikipedia 
Dumb Waiter in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)
Wikiwand in your browser!
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.
