chimney corner
1
6.3
- noun
- Archaic
:
rinconcito de la chimenea
- She often read her favorite books in the cozy chimney corner by the fireplace.
Examples
-
I see a vacant seat in the poor chimney corner... ...and a crutch without an owner.
-
Veasey slept on like the dead in the chimney corner.
Fiction book (1997) -
He looked over to where Veasey lay asleep in the chimney corner.
Fiction book (1997) -
Ingle-neuk (neuk = nook) "chimney corner."
Blog text (30) -
In the chimney corner was a bedstead, and Inman could see that they had not even tried to shim it level but had only made the modest effort of turning it so that the head was to the high side.
Fiction book (1997) -
In the winter, we love to gather around the warm chimney corner with hot cocoa and blankets.
-
During family gatherings, everyone enjoyed sitting together in the chimney corner to share stories.
Synonyms
40
3.0
A small sheltered corner where you can sit or read
21
5.5
The floor area in front of a fireplace where you build a fire
4
3.2
The area in front of a fireplace where people sit to keep warm
1
9.9
A small space by a fireplace where people sit to keep warm
A place by the fire where people sit and feel warm
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: combining 'chimney' (a fireplace exhaust) with 'corner' yields a corner beside the chimney/hearth, and its cozy/favored-spot connotation follows naturally from that location. This locative + evaluative sense is predictable and cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Chimney corner comes from old houses where people sat in the small space by the chimney and corner to stay warm and tell stories by the fire. That's why chimney corner now means a 'cozy' or 'favorite spot' in a room.