chair

UK/t͡ʃɛə/US/t͡ʃɛɚ/

nounA1Very common — you will meet it every day · #756 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: chairs

A chair is the furniture with a back that one person sits on. Pull up a chair.

The back is what separates it from a stool, which is the whole definition. A chair also means the person running a meeting, from the seat they sat in.

Definitions of chair

1nounchairThe furniture with a back that one person sits on.A1
“The chair had been in the family for three generations.”

chair is furniture.

Where it comes from

From Greek katá, down, and hédra, a seat, by way of Latin cathedra — a bishop's chair. A cathedral is simply the building that has one in it.

Proto-Indo-European
*sed-
Middle English
chayere
English, today
chair

Built from

κατά · Ancient Greek — down
ἕδρα · Ancient Greek — seat

From Middle English chayere. From Middle English chayere, chayer, chayre, from Old French chaiere, chaere, from Latin cathedra (“seat”), from Ancient Greek καθέδρα, from κατά (“down”) + ἕδρα (“seat”). Partially displaced native stool and settle, which now have more specialised senses. a doublet of cathedra and chaise.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Around the House

Practise this word

chair in the wild

First used in 1890, the electric chair has become a symbol of capital punishment in the United States.
Electric chair
The chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is the head of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States.
Chair of the Federal Reserve
The chair may serve multiple terms, subject to re-nomination and confirmation each time; William McChesney Martin was the longest serving chair, with Alan Greenspan closely second.
Chair of the Federal Reserve
The role of a party chair is often quite different from that of a party leader.
Party chair
In some organizations, the chair is also known as president (or other title).
Chair (officer)

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

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