table

Furniture with a top surface to accommodate a variety of uses.

Noun

  1. Furniture with a top surface to accommodate a variety of uses.
    • Set that dish on the table over there, please.
    • He had one hand on the bounce bottle—and he'd never let go of that since he got back to the table—but he had a handkerchief in the other and was swabbing his deadlights with it. - 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter...
    • A very neat old woman, still in her good outdoor coat and best beehive hat, was sitting at a polished mahogany table on whose surface there were several scored scratches so deep that a triangular piece of the veneer had...

    1. An item of furniture with a flat top surface raised above the ground, usually on one or more legs.

    2. The board or table-like furniture on which a game is played, such as snooker, billiards, or draughts.

    3. A flat tray which can be used as a table.

    4. A supply of food or entertainment.

      • The baron kept a fine table and often held large banquets.

    5. (metonymic) A booth or display at an event such as an exposition or fair.

    6. A service of Holy Communion.

    7. (backgammon) One half of a backgammon board, which is divided into the inner and outer table.

    8. A wide, flat obstacle for a horse to jump over.

  2. A group of people at a table, for example, for a meal, meeting or game.
    • Alas poore Yorick […] VVhere be your Jibes now? Your Gambals? Your Songs? Your flaſhes of Merriment that were wont to ſet the Table on a Rore? - c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet,...
    • The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again;[…]. Our table in the dining-room became again the abode of scintillating...

    1. (poker, metonymic) The lineup of players at a given table.

      • That's the strongest table I've ever seen at a European Poker Tour event

    2. (roleplaying games, metonymic) A group of players meeting regularly to play a campaign.

    3. (waitstaff, metonymic) A group of diners at a given table or tables.

      • Table 9 wants another round of beers.
      • John always gets the best tips because he gets the best tables! It's not fair!
  3. A two-dimensional presentation of data.
    • I’m using mathesis — a universal science of measurement and order … And there is also taxinomia a principle of classification and ordered tabulation. Knowledge replaced universal resemblance with finite differences....

    1. A matrix or grid of data arranged in rows and columns.

    2. A collection of arithmetic calculations arranged in a table, such as multiplications in a multiplication table.

      • The children were practising multiplication tables.
      • Don’t you know your tables?
      • Here is a table of natural logarithms.

    3. (computing, chiefly databases) A lookup table, most often a set of vectors.

    4. (sports) A visual representation of a classification of teams or individuals based on their success over a predetermined period.

      • On this evidence they will certainly face tougher tests, as a depleted Newcastle side seemed to bask in the relative security of being ninth in the table. - 2011 April 10, Alistair Magowan, “Aston Villa 1-0 Newcastle”,...
  4. The top of a stringed instrument, particularly a member of the violin family: the side of the instrument against which the strings vibrate.
  5. The flat topmost facet of a cut diamond.
  6. A flat gravestone supported on pillars.
  7. A writing tablet.

Origin

Inherited from Middle English table, tabel, tabil, tabul, from Old English tabele, tabul, tablu, tabule, tabula (“board”); also as tæfl, tæfel, an early Germanic borrowing of Latin tabula (“tablet, board, plank, chart”). The sense of “piece of furniture” is from Old French table, of same Latin origin; Old English used bēod or bord instead for this meaning: see board. Doublet of tabula and tavla.

Forms

tables tyebble

Synonyms

grid vector

Hypernyms

array furniture

Hyponyms

bar table bedside table bench table billiard table bird table book table by-table captain's table card table change table chart table chef's table children's table cocktail table coffee table conference table console table diaper table dining table dinner table drafting table drawing table dressing table drinks table

Derived

above the table at table bottom of the table bring to the table clear the table coffee table book coffee-table book cool kids' table corbel table crosstable dispatch table distributed hash table down-table drink under the table entable extension table fact table farm-to-table fence the tables hashtable head of the table kitchen table issue kitchen table polyamory kitchen table software

Verb

  1. To tabulate; to put into a table or grid.
    • to table fines
  2. To supply (a guest, client etc.) with food at a table; to feed.
    • 'April 13 1638, Henry Wotton, letter to John Milton At Siena I was tabled in the house of one Alberto Scipioni
  3. To delineate; to represent, as in a picture; to depict.
    • c. 1607, Francis Bacon, letter to Tobie Matthew tabled and pictured in the chambers of meditation
  4. To put on the table of a commission or legislative assembly; to propose for formal discussion or consideration, to put on the agenda.
    • In a raucous Commons, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, confirmed he had tabled a formal motion of confidence in the government, backed by other opposition leaders, which MPs would vote on on Wednesday. - 2019 January...

    Synonyms: moot propose

  5. To remove from the agenda, to postpone dealing with; to shelve (to indefinitely postpone consideration or discussion of something).
    • The legislature tabled the amendment, so they will not be discussing it until later.
    • The motion was tabled, ensuring that it would not be taken up until a later date.
  6. To represent a company or organization (at an exposition, fair, etc.), usually at a booth or display.
  7. To join (pieces of timber) together using coaks.
  8. To put on a table.
    • 1833 Thomas Carlyle, letter to his Mother, The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson [A]fter some clatter offered us a rent of five pounds for the right to shoot here, and even tabled the cash that...
  9. To show one's cards face-up, especially during showdown.
  10. To make board hems in the skirts and bottoms of (sails) in order to strengthen them in the part attached to the bolt-rope.

Forms

tables tabling tabled tyebble

Related

tabulate tabula rasa