cupboard

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A piece of furniture with doors and shelves, used to store food, dishes, or other things.

   Put the cups back in the cupboard when they are dry.

Simplified etymology

Cupboard originally meant a board or table on which cups, plates, and other crockery were displayed. The modern sense of an enclosed storage cabinet emerged in the 16th century.

Inherited from Middle English cuppeborde, cupbord. Equivalent to cup + board. Phonetic variants show that the /p/ in the original forms had assimilated to the present-day /b/ by the 16th century; the etymological spelling has, however, dominated from the 18th century.

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