the.com/dining room
The only room built entirely around the radical idea that humans should sit still and talk.
means The room in a home set aside for eating meals, usually furnished with a table and chairs.
from A plain English compound stacking two old words together. 'Dine' arrived from Old French 'disner,' to eat, which traces back through Late Latin to a root meaning roughly 'to break one's fast' — the same lineage that gives us 'dinner.' 'Room' is solidly Germanic, from Old English 'rum,' meaning space or extent (a cousin of German 'Raum'). So a 'dining room' is literally an 'eating space' — the term for a dedicated dining chamber grew common as houses got grand enough to wall off where you ate from where you did everything else.
- Victorian invention
- Dedicated dining rooms spread with the rising middle class
- Vanishing act
- Open-plan homes are quietly killing the formal version
- Power seat
- Head of the table carries ancient hierarchical weight
- Used rarely
- Many sit empty except for holidays and homework
the state dining room — formal dining room in the white house where presidents host state dinners
versailles hall of mirrors — the grand dining space in palace of versailles where louis xiv held court