table

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a piece of furniture having a smooth flat top that is usually supported by one or more vertical legs

   it was a sturdy table

2. 2
   noun

   a piece of furniture with tableware for a meal laid out on it

   I reserved a table at my favorite restaurant

3. 3
   noun

   food or meals in general

   You set a fine table.

4. 4
   noun

   a set of data arranged in rows and columns

   see table 1

5. 5
   noun

   a company of people assembled at a table for a meal or game

   I entertained the whole table with my witty remarks.

6. 6
   noun

   Furniture with a top surface to accommodate a variety of uses.

   Set that dish on the table over there, please.

7. 7
   noun

   A group of people at a table, for example, for a meal, meeting or game.

   Alas poore Yorick […] VVhere be your Jibes now? Your Gambals? Your Songs? Your flaſhes of Merriment that were wont to ſet the Table on a Rore?

8. 8
   noun

   A two-dimensional presentation of data.

   I’m using mathesis — a universal science of measurement and order … And there is also taxinomia a principle of classification and ordered tabulation. Knowledge replaced universal resemblance with finite differences. History was arrested and turned into tables … Western reason had entered the age of judgement.

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English table, tabel, tabil, tabul, from Old English tabele, tabul, tablu, tabule, tabula (“board”); also as tæfl, tæfel, an early Germanic borrowing of Latin tabula (“tablet, board, plank, chart”). The sense of “piece of furniture” is from Old French table, of same Latin origin; Old English used bēod or bord instead for this meaning: see board. Doublet of tabula and tavla.