Chester drawers is a common reshaping of chest of drawers, especially when the furniture name has been learned by ear rather than from print. Jessica in Madison, Wisconsin, grew up near St. Louis and thought it might simply be a style name, like other furniture terms. Surveys of American case-furniture vocabulary show plenty of variation, including bureau, draws, chifferobe, and armoire. For more, see Allison Burkette’s The Story of Chester Drawers and The Lion, The Witch, And The Armoire: Lexical Variation In Case Furniture Terms. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Chester Drawers” is a Common Version of “Chest of Drawers””
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Jessica LaFan from Madison, Wisconsin.
Hello, Jessica.
Hi, Jessica. Welcome to the program.
Hi, thank you.
I have a question regarding the phrase, chest of drawers. There’s a little bit of a story here. A couple years ago, my best friend had written down chester drawers on a sheet of paper when making a list of things for her house, and her husband, who is my husband’s best friend, had told him, like, teasing her about it. And then in return, my husband was telling me about it. Oh, you won’t believe what she did. And laughing. And I’m like, okay, so what is it?
Right, right.
You didn’t know.
I didn’t know.
And he’s like, oh, stop it. You’re just teasing. And I’m like, no, really. I said, so it’s not chest of drawers? And he’s like, no, it’s chest of drawers. And he’s like, what could you have possibly thought that they were, you know, what that means? I’m like, honestly, I never put any thought into it. Maybe Chester’s her lover or something. I was like, well, maybe it’s a type of furniture. You know, we have got all these different styles of furniture. And I’m like, I just assumed it was a style of furniture. So my question is, is this a common misconception of the phrase?
You’re in Wisconsin right now, right?
Yes.
Where are you from originally?
I am from the St. Louis, Missouri area.
Oh, hello. I was born there. And your female friend who was the one who wrote it down, where is she from?
She is from the same area.
Okay, okay. Yeah, St. Louis is an odd place because, no, genuinely, because linguistically it’s a little bit of an island and it’s got some weird characteristics of the south, some weird characteristics of the Great Lakes region, and some weird characteristics of the Midlands or the Midwest. And so it’s just like an odd little bubble there. But in any case, you are not alone. There are two fantastic papers written by my colleague, Alison Burkett, that’s B-U-R-K-E-T-T-E, on the subject of the wide variety of names for the piece of furniture, which is generally, and there are a lot of different configurations, and she has pictures, of a piece of wooden furniture about waist high, made out of, again, made out of wood, maybe three drawers, one, two, three, stacked on top of one another, handles on the drawers. That’s what you’re talking about, right?
Yes.
And sometimes it’s more like a vertical one. Maybe it’s about shoulder high or about chest high, but in general. And there’s a ton of these responses. She analyzed these surveys that were done across the country where this question was a fairly standard question. What do you call a piece of furniture that looks like X? And she got all these answers. And it turns out a number of people think that chest of drawers is properly called Chester drawers. C-H-E-S-T-E-R, drawers. It’s really interesting to me because it shows that the word was transmitted through the mouth to the ear and that people weren’t learning it from print and they weren’t learning it from Ikea catalogs and they weren’t learning it right going to Sears to shop to decorate their house. It tended to be passed along with the furniture from grandparents to parents to children. Really interesting stuff.
So the basic conclusion of this is that this particular furniture is a mainstay of American home decorating and has a dozen or 15 different common names. I did know people in southern Indiana who wrote Chester drawers that way. And I thought they were joking the first time I saw it. And it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t a capital C either. I was thinking, well, maybe they think it’s some, you know, English thing, you know, British Chesterfield or something like that. But it’s just Chester with a small c drawers, right?
Yep.
So some people call these bureaus and chests, and some people call them draws. So it’s the word drawer pronounced as if there’s no last syllable there. So D-R-A-W-S, draws. Just a ton of different names here. And, of course, there’s also, do you have a wardrobe in your house?
I don’t currently, but I have had one in the past.
Would you call it a chiffer robe or an armoire or a closet or a cedar robe or any of those?
Armoires is probably the most common.
Okay, brilliant. Because that’s another one that people have a lot of names for. In any case, these are two long articles. They’re kind of academic, but they’re incredibly fun. The pictures really help a lot. And we’re going to post links to these on our website because it’s too much to relate here in this call. But, Jessica, the bottom line is you’re not alone. It’s okay. The people who are complaining can back off. Anyway, Jessica, I hope we’ve helped a little bit.
Yes, thank you so much.
Sure.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Grant, I’ll say this article is lively. Not only do they use the expression Chester drawers and chest of drawers and chest on frame. I mean, this stuff is pretty hot. There’s one called Bachelor Chest. I’m getting an image there. And then there’s one called Chest on Chest. This is getting… I’ve got to put this down. I’ve got to put this down. Call us 1-877-929-9673 or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org. And if you just can’t wait, come visit us on Facebook. We’re there under Wayword Radio.
