clothes press

[dante]

Hello everyone,

Is "clothes press" a rather obsolete term for a wardrobe or clothes closet?

Thanks for the help

[christinecornwall]

I have never heard this used in the Northeast US. We would say closet, dresser, wardrobe etc.
If I didn't look it up, I would have assumed it to be another word for iron.

[Bobinwales]

Yes Dante, it is an obsolete term for somewhere to keep clothes. At a rough guess 100 years obsolete!

[dante]

Thank you for the answers christine and BobinWales.

[JANE DOErell]

I never heard of ''clothes press'' either but a quick Google pulls it up in shopping, persons apparently are still trying to sell them. Further down the page is descriptions and definitions.

[Ken Greenwald]

Dante, We Wordwizards like to quickly resolve pressing problems.
_________________

Ken – July 25, 2010

[christinecornwall]

Dante, We Wordwizards like to quickly resolve pressing problems.

That joke needs a little more steam.....;-)

[dante]

And some of WWs occasionally enjoy poking fun at poor ESL learners :)

[Ken Greenwald]

Dante, The only CLOTHES PRESS I'm familiar with is the one that dry cleaning and laundering businesses use for pressing clothes. It’s that ironing board sandwich affair which gives off a shot of steam (a la Christine) when the top portion comes down to do its press.

After supplying my previous wise-ass posting, I actually looked it up and found the following (however, they really should say something like, ‘rarely used today‘, but they don't):

Here's the short and sweet definition offered by the OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY:

CLOTHES-PRESS [[CLOTHES PRESS, CLOTHESPRESS]] [from PRESS, which was a cupboard for clothes (1371)].

1) A receptacle for clothes; properly a shelved recess or movable chest or case in which clothes are kept folded; but also sometimes applied to a wardrobe in which they are hung up unfolded.

<1713 “When she heard your voice, she ran into the clothspress.”—The Wonder by S. Centlivre, I, i.>

<1822 “Furnished with clothes-presses, and mighty chests of drawers.”—Bracebridge Hall (1849) by Washington Irving, page 456>

2) An apparatus for pressing various textile fabrics.
____________________________

The DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN REGIONAL ENGLISH goes into excruciating detail on CLOTHESPRESS in the equivalent of a full 8½ x 11 page. But I won't subject you to that kind of pain:

b]CLOTHESPRESS[/b]:

1) [1773]: A piece of furniture for storing clothing: A wardrobe, shelved cabinet, or chest of drawers. [[Its precise meaning varied from state to state. In some places it contained both drawers and hanging space; in others it just contained shelves on which clothes were placed flat; and in some cases it was built into the wall. But today it is mostly considered old-fashioned]]

<1845 “There was nothin~ in the appearance of the room to afford any clue to the character of the house. It was large and dreary, with heavy black rafters crossing it. In a corner stood a great lumbering clothes press, and a chest bound with iron bands.”—United States Democratic Review, Vol.17, Issue 90, December>[[from archived source]]

2) [1903] Transferred : A clothes closet [[‘small dark from where clothing is hung’; ‘a built-in space in a room for hanging clothes.’]]

<1980 “My 87 year old mother, who is from upstate New York and originally from the Hudson River area, still calls a closet a ‘clothes press.’”— Article Letters, New York Times>

_________________

Ken – July 25, 2010 (hard-pressed to say any more than I have)

[Wizard of Oz]

.. what goes around comes back to where it started .. well generally speaking .. my acquaintence with press as a cupboard stems mainly from hearing linen press .. so I dutifully googled it to see what else I could reveal and lo and behold Ken there you were all googled out and ready to be clicked .. back in Nov 2004 you answered an enquiry from Hannah C from Exmouth WA, Aus .. and put a Kiwi in his place .. but the most telling part was end of the thread ..

linen press
Posted on: 28 Nov 2004 07:13

Yes, you ex-pressed the material well, Ken.

Reply from XXXX

.. followed by ..

linen press
Posted on: 28 Nov 2004 07:27

And you squeezed it for all it was worth, XXXX.

Reply from YYYY

... now I wonder who those two could be ??????

WoZ totally impressed

[christinecornwall]

I'm imPRESSed with how long you kept the press bit up!!

[Edwin F Ashworth]

I suppose that the authorities on antique-furniture terminology (if not antique furniture terminology) would be antiques experts rather than linguists.
Without citing references, I'll say that I've come across two very distinct types of case-pieces (furniture with a carcase) labelled as linen presses:

(a) a wardrobe usually with one, two or three courses of drawers under the cupboard section/s; the term seems to be far more common in the US than the UK

(b) a lowish chest-of-drawers with an actual mechanical press bolted on top; this usage is far less common - a trawl through Google Images will turn up one or two examples eventually.