Cabinet Meaning
/ˈkæb.ɪ.nɪt/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounA storage closet either separate from, or built into, a wall.
nounA cupboard.
Sentence Examples
Every member of the cabinet was present.
The file cabinet drawers are open.
The cabinet rallied behind the Prime Minister.
Synonyms & Antonyms
Synonyms:
Antonyms:
None
CEFR Practice Quiz
The president appointed a new member to his ____ last Tuesday.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
He kept the glasses in the top ____ of the kitchen for safety city.
Word Origin & History
From cabin + -et, influenced by French cabinet. In sense of “a government group”, compare salon, also named for a room used to gather.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"‘[…] There's every Staffordshire crime-piece ever made in this cabinet, and that's unique. The Van Hoyer Museum in New York hasn't that very rare second version of Maria Marten's Red Barn over there, nor the little Frederick George Manning—he was the criminal Dickens saw hanged on the roof of the gaol in Horsemonger Lane, by the way—’"
— 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 3, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
"Here I obtained the rare and beautiful swallow-tail butterflies, Papilio aenomaus and P. liris; the males of which are quite unlike each other, and belong in fact to distinct sections of the genus, while the females are so much alike that they are undistinguishable on the wing, and to an uneducated eye equally so in the cabinet."
— 1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 297:
"It is a perfect cabinet of faithful, valuable, and extensive information; and it ought to have a place on the shelves of the most select and compact library, and be in the possession of every private family, as a work both of valuable reference."
— 1844 August, “Notices of New Works: The Travels of Marco Polo, greatly Amended and Enlarged, from Valuable early Manuscripts recently published by the French Society of Geography, and [in] Italy, by Count Baldelli Boni […]. By Hugh Murray, F. R. S. E.”, in The Metropolitan, volume 40, London: Saunders and Otley, page 117:
"Holmes took a note of it. “One other question,” said he. “Was the photograph a cabinet?”"
— 1891, Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal In Bohemia, Norton, published 2005, page 19:
"Lincoln had a great deal of trouble with his Cabinet because some of them got it into their heads that they, and not the President, were the policy-makers. James K. Polk had the same difficulty with his Cabinet. Franklin Roosevelt never had any difficulty with his Cabinet for the simple reason that he himself, in my opinion, spent too much time doing the work that should have been delegated to the Cabinet."
— 1955, Harry S Truman, Memoirs of Harry S. Truman: Year of Decisions, volume I, Signet Books, published 1965, →OCLC, →OL, page 364:
Explore More C1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The president appointed a new member to his ____ last Tuesday.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
He kept the glasses in the top ____ of the kitchen for safety city.