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.’
1.1A 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(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’.
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