Apparently there's a lot of different terms...

[deird_lj]

Okay. I’m officially intrigued.



[Poll #1553763]

Comments

[deird1]

For that matter, what you call a dresser, I'd call a chest of drawers...

[angearia.livejournal.com]

You know, I never use the word cupboard. Never. I wonder why that word fell out of practice around me. Is this an American thing or an Emmie thing? Huh.

Cabinet in the kitchen. Pantry for what's essentially a closet for food. But everything else is just a closet. You might say "linen closet", "hallway closet" and "bedroom closet/my closet".

Ah, chest of drawers. I think I've used that in the past, but mostly it's dresser.

[deird1]

From the conversation I've been having on drop_the_u, it looks like "kitchen cupboard" is a West America thing, and "kitchen cabinet" is East America.


No news on the rest of the world, yet...

[peroxidepirate.livejournal.com]

Where I am, in the midwest, it's cupboard. You can call it a kitchen cupboard if you like, but there's really no need -- a cupboard is in the kitchen unless you specify that it's another kind.

[next_to_normal]

I never say cupboard, either. Of course, I also never say pantry. I think of a pantry as a walk-in closet for food, but I don't have one of those, and neither did my parents. In fact, I don't know anyone who does. We just keep our food in the kitchen cabinets.

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

Yep.

Though I've had a pantry before in my old apartment, and I know some friends who've had pantries. But they're distinct from cabinets.

[lavastar.livejournal.com]

Yes! Glad someone agrees. Apparently I'm weird for not having heard of people having pantries, like, as a regular thing.

[fenchurche.livejournal.com]

I actually use both terms (dresser and chest of drawers... although when I was really little, I remember thinking the term was "Chester Drawers." Hee!) pretty interchangeably.

I think that "wardrobe" doesn't get used as much in the US, mostly because most houses have built in closets, so it just never really made it as strongly into our vocabulary.

As for the place where you keep food? We have a pantry, but we also keep food in what I would call the cupboards.

[deird1]

It looks like you guys only use wardrobe for stand-alone pieces of furniture. Which I find utterly weird - over here, we have stand-alone wardrobes, built-in wardrobes, walk-in wardrobes...

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Pretty much. Wardrobes are large pieces of furniture with doors for storage. Closets are rooms (and can be linen closet, coat closet, bedroom closet, etc). Pantry is also a room (closet for food) or a large cabinet for food. Cabinets are millwork/casework built-in pieces.

Although the question sort of reminds me of an interior design professor I had in college that had conniption fits if we used the term "couch" saying those aren't couches they're sofas or settees. The term "couch" was forbidden unless we were referring to a chaise/'fainting couch' which, seriously, who calls them fainting couches any more? (Except Mad Men)

[next_to_normal]

I have a dresser AND a chest. (I would not have known they had different names, except that's what my mother calls them.) They are both furniture with drawers and no doors, so the only real difference is size. The dresser is wider than it is tall (it comes up to about my waist), whereas the chest is taller than it is wide (it comes up to my chest). The dresser, because it's shorter, has a big mirror above it.

[lavastar.livejournal.com]

Hee! Chest of drawers is adorable, in what sounds like an antique British-y way.

Then again, most British/Australian versions of words sound that way to me.