MEANING
A small service lift for carrying food or other goods between floors.
Use it for
service routes; concealed vertical movement; older hotelsConnect unseen work downstairs to activity in the rooms above.
Words that belong together
- kitchen dumbwaiter
- dumbwaiter shaft
- send plates up in the dumbwaiter
On the page
The cook loaded the soup bowls into the dumbwaiter.
A bell rang upstairs when the dumbwaiter reached the dining room.
The blocked dumbwaiter shaft had become a cupboard on every floor.
Nearby words
Related words
Word forms
- Base
- dumbwaiter
Usage notes
Primary category: architecture. Not intended to carry people; a historical furniture sense also exists, but this entry focuses on the built-in lift. Count noun: dumbwaiters; variant dumb waiter, plural dumb waiters.
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