Home US English drawing room

Definition of drawing room in English:

drawing room

Pronunciation /ˈdroɪŋ ˌrum/

Translate drawing room into Spanish

noun

  • 1A room in a large private house in which guests can be received and entertained.

    ‘This was once a state bedroom for visiting dignitaries but is now an elegant drawing room for entertaining important guests.’
    • ‘There are three bedrooms, a drawing room, a dining room, a kitchen and a bathroom.’
    • ‘As well as four bedrooms, the house has a drawing room, dining room, kitchen and a study.’
    • ‘The 120 square metre house has a drawing room, dining room, kitchen, three bedrooms and a bathroom.’
    • ‘It includes a drawing room, dining room, kitchen, the four bedrooms and a family bathroom.’
    • ‘A second hall to the side leads to the drawing room and sitting room.’
    • ‘I live in the biggest rooms: the drawing room, the dining room and the ballroom.’
    • ‘Special features include white limestone flooring in the hallways, oak timber flooring in the drawing rooms and dining rooms.’
    • ‘The first reception room, the drawing room, is to the left of an entrance hall with a marbled tiled floor and guest toilet.’
    • ‘The drawing room and dining room lie to the left of the hallway and look onto the front and rear respectively.’
    • ‘The main reception room, the drawing room, lies to the left of the entrance hall.’
    • ‘Both the drawing room and dining room have ornate fireplaces and decorative cornicing with large windows looking out over the gardens.’
    • ‘On the ground floor the drawing room and dining room have open fireplaces while the first and second floor contain the five bedrooms.’
    • ‘My brother's wife would want to run the house and use the drawing room and dining room - and where would I be?’
    • ‘The pattern is repeated on the first floor, which includes the ornate drawing room and turreted day room.’
    • ‘He passed through the sitting room and the drawing room, coming to the partially opened bedroom door.’
    • ‘Downstairs there were four rooms: a dining room, drawing room, playroom and kitchen.’
    • ‘Under the upstairs drawing room is a family room and smaller study.’
    • ‘Double sliding doors between the drawing room and dining room have been recessed into the dividing wall.’
    • ‘The subjects, it has to be said, seem more appropriate for a dining room than a drawing room.’
    1. 1.1A private compartment in a train, typically one that accommodates two or three people.

adjective

attributive

  • 1Consciously refined, lighthearted, and elegant.

    ‘drawing-room small talk’
    • ‘In need of more lucrative work, Churchward then sailed for South Africa, where his art and his elegant drawing-room manner soon won him the favour of Cecil Rhodes, who made him the gift of a rare pink diamond.’
    • ‘Spectators were led first into the drawing-room elegance of Suite Saint-Saens by Gerald Arpino.’
    • ‘He was, it is said, the midwife to the birth of the new, tough and usually politically engaged theatre that overthrew the claustrophobic, suburban drawing-room style of the post-war London stage.’
    • ‘But The Wandering Shadows doesn't pretend to possess a drawing-room erudition.’
    • ‘Because through centuries of tradition the writer's job has been to present human life to human life, and not to present drawing-room conversation.’
    1. 1.1(of a song or play) characterized by a polite observance of social proprieties.
      ‘a stock figure of Thirties drawing-room comedy’
      • ‘Until Synge wrote Playboy, Irish theatre had been made up entirely of rather dull drawing-room dramas.’
      • ‘Accusations of vicarage film-making are easy gibes to fling at Dame Agatha's drawing-room dramas, especially when the set designers and wardrobe people do such a good job at recreating the period.’
      • ‘Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft were still in the ascendant and the West End was dominated by drawing-room comedies, lightweight whodunnits, American musicals and classic revivals.’
      • ‘It's the lightness of touch that I'll miss, the sureness with which a Frasier script could go from drawing-room comedy to sheer farce to tragedy without missing a beat.’
      • ‘It's been very liberating as it's a much more fluid design process than something like a Noel Coward drawing-room comedy.’
      • ‘A remarkable mingling of Greek choral tragedy, English drawing-room comedy and Yoruban ritual and dance, Horseman is noble, poetic and devastating.’
      • ‘Noel Coward's script gleefully satirises the pomposity of the art world, merging arty in-jokes with the kind of brittle drawing-room comedy that Coward is so renowned for.’
      • ‘He looked a bit like the sort of chap who in drawing-room comedies was supposed to come through the French windows swinging a tennis racquet; a handsome fellow without a care in the world.’
      • ‘Instead of endless drawing-room comedies about the idle rich, Broadway audiences were now entertained by the trials and tribulations of ordinary gals and fellas.’
      • ‘Tony has traveled from the drawing-room comedy of England, through a jungle of confusion, and emerged into a clearing.’
      • ‘In drawing-room comedy, phantasmagoria will always appear as silly, never gruesome.’
      • ‘Shakespeare Breviates were adaptations of Shakespeare for drawing-room performance.’

Origin

Mid 17th century (denoting a private room attached to a more public one): abbreviation of 16th-century withdrawing-room ‘a room to withdraw to’.