Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A facing or paneling, usually of wood, applied to the walls of a room.
- noun The lower part of an interior wall when finished in a material different from that of the upper part.
- transitive verb To line or panel (a room or wall) with wainscoting.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To line or panel with wainscot: as, to
wainscot a hall. - To line or panel in the manner of wainscoting, with material other than oak, or, more generally, than wood.
- noun A fine kind of foreign oak-timber, not so liable to cast or warp as English oak, easily worked with tools, and used at first for any kind of paneled work, and afterward in other ways.
- noun A wooden lining or boarding of the walls of apartments, usually made in panels; paneled boards on the walls of rooms. Originally this lining or paneling was made of wainscot-oak.
- noun One of certain noctuid moths: an English collectors' name.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To line with boards or panelwork, or as if with panelwork.
- noun obsolete Oaken timber or boarding.
- noun (Arch.) A wooden lining or boarding of the walls of apartments, usually made in panels.
- noun (Zoöl.) Any one of numerous species of European moths of the family
Leucanidæ .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun An area of
wooden (especiallyoaken )panelling on the lower part of a room’s walls. - verb To
decorate a wall with a wainscot.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun panel forming the lower part of an interior wall when it is finished differently from the rest of the wall
- noun wooden panels that can be used to line the walls of a room
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Whether we may not, for the same use, manufacture divers things at home of more beauty and variety than wainscot, which is imported at such expense from Norway?
Querist George Berkeley 1719
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The wainscot could be a wallpaper, like Lincrusta, or it could be wood.
Brownstoner 2010
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The wainscot could be a wallpaper, like Lincrusta, or it could be wood.
Brownstoner 2010
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This feeling is very strong in many apartment houses where small rooms are overburdened by this kind of wainscot, and to make matters worse, the top is used as a plate-rail.
Furnishing the Home of Good Taste A Brief Sketch of the Period Styles in Interior Decoration with Suggestions as to Their Employment in the Homes of Today Lucy Abbot Throop
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If you would like a bit of domestic information, a picture of matrimony, I have to inform you that our Neighbour behind the wainscot has discovered that his wife has been noodling him, and running him in debt, and the consequence is, that she is out of his house, and he has advertized that he will pay no debts that she may contract.
Letter 242 2009
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This is most stunningly displayed in the show's chief highlight, a re - creation of the dining room first exhibited in the 1903 Arts and Crafts Exhibition organized by Stickley in Syracuse, N.Y. The room incorporates the handsome, massive furniture in a setting where everything from the oak-and-burlap wainscot to the pottery vessels on the table and sideboard was designed or overseen by Stickley himself.
Four-Square Reformer Barrymore Laurence Scherer 2010
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I was anxious to see men so famous in the world of Books; But though Mr Rogers at whose table we met behaved with his usual kindness Dr A and Son would have known just as much of me had I been looking through a gimblet hole in the wainscot, and I should have made as good a figure in the company.
Letter 115 2009
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"As we stand upright and are, in a sense, rooted in the ground so the wall through its wainscot division, is rooted relative to the floor," he wrote, in just one of several passages where he is clearly thinking like, and arguing from, the perspective of the fully physically able-bodied person he was in 1982.
Philip Kennicott on Michael Graves's 'Revealing Culture' exhibit 2010
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The home has custom woodwork throughout, including reclaimed wood floors and wainscot paneling.
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The girl disappeared down a hallway, running her hand along the wainscot for guidance.
A Bad Day’s Work Nora McFarland 2010
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