Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A framework with shelves, placed between a kitchen and a dining-room for conveying food, etc.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A framework on which dishes, food, etc., are passed from one room or story of a house to another; a lift for dishes, etc.; also, a piece of furniture with movable or revolving shelves.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Alternative spelling of
dumbwaiter .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a small elevator used to convey food (or other goods) from one floor of a building to another
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Wetherell The house also has a lift and dumb-waiter system in the kitchen, vaults, air cooling and mood lighting, operated through a state-of-the-art Crestron system.
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Moreover, he had a knowing glance with his eye, which I should have as soon expected from a dumb-waiter — an article of furniture to which James, in his usual state, may be happily assimilated.
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This was brought about solely by the arrangement of the flats, which were united in one place, as it were, by the dumb-waiter.
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If the occupants of both flats answered to the whistle of the janitor at the same time, they would stand face to face when they opened the dumb-waiter doors.
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The stationary range, hot and cold water, dumb-waiter, speaking tubes, and call-bell for the janitor pleased her very much.
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I used to visit that library as a boy, when visitors 'book requests were sent by pneumatic tube into some distant repository in the bowels of the earth, and the requested books would eventually come forth via dumb-waiter.
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Located directly below the Oyster Bar kitchen, the old boarded-up dumb-waiter used to bring mounds of greasy dishes to be washed in the deep sinks and dried and sent back upstairs.
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Here is his round-corner room, with walls of famous thickness, and a dumb-waiter lifting up through the floor the table and all its viands, that here he might dine alone with his intimates and no tell-tale sounds escape.
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The approaches are guarded by the senators and _conservatori_, patriarchs and bishops, and at meal-times, a judge of the _Rota_ is stationed at the dumb-waiter to examine the dishes as they are brought up, and make sure that the intrigues within get no help from the intrigues without.
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"Not that it matters much, 'cause the dumb-waiter down to where you be ain't waitin 'to-day, but it's manners, kinder, to ask."
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