Dictionary

ice-cream chair en · NOUN

Etymology

From the use of this type of chair in ice cream parlors.

Meanings

1. A lightweight armless chair with a circular seat and wire back.
   • At the small table he grasps its matching ice-cream chair opposite Cossetti's, sits and palms a worn deck of cards. 2012, Georgette Beck, The Song of Sylvania Square, page 26:
   • I'd worn a pale yellow blouse and skirt for Grandma's service and now I looked like a Neiman-Marcus sack that had been dragged ostentatiously around the rest of the mall, stuffed with items from Women's Tall & Oversize, crumpled into an ice-cream chair at the food court, and dipped into a fountain while searching for pennies to throw. 2008, Joe Coomer, One Vacant Chair: A Novel, page 55:
   • Another innovative metal form was the “ice-cream” chair, so called because its portability and inexpensiveness made it practical for use in luncheonettes and ice-cream parlors everywhere. 1985, Marshall B. Davidson, Elizabeth Stillinger, The American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, page 186:

Forms