dumbwaiter
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From (deprecated template usage) dumb ("unable to speak") + (deprecated template usage) waiter, originally separate words and describing the portable table's inability to relate gossip after the meal. By the use of the term to describe small service elevators in American homes in the 1840s, it simply meant dumb as "mechanical", "unable to speak at all".
Noun
dumbwaiter (plural dumbwaiters)
- (deprecated template usage) (obsolete) a table or set of trays on rollers used for serving food
- (deprecated template usage) (obsolete) a lazy Susan
- A small elevator used to move food etc. from one floor of a building to another.