to dine below the mahogany
- idiom
- Archaic
:
cenar en un ambiente aristocrático
- Only the select few were ever invited to dine below the mahogany in that grand hall.
Examples
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She was thrilled to dine below the mahogany at the ambassador's banquet.
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He boasted of having dined below the mahogany with nobility during his travels.
-
We will dine below the mahogany tonight!
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Have you ever dined below the mahogany?
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Only the select few were ever invited to dine below the mahogany in that grand hall.
-
She was thrilled to dine below the mahogany at the ambassador's banquet.
-
He boasted of having dined below the mahogany with nobility during his travels.
How Formal
Surface Forms
Morphology
There is a partial connection: 'dine' + 'mahogany' can evoke eating at a mahogany table and thus suggest a formal setting, but the phrasing 'below the mahogany' is spatially odd and the prestige reading depends on cultural/lexical knowledge that mahogany signals high status. A B1 learner who knows the constituent words would not reliably infer the idiomatic sense without prior exposure, so the expression is only partially predictable.
Etymology
Dine below the mahogany comes from old big houses where the main table was made of shiny mahogany. Guests who sat at that table were treated as important, so saying someone 'dined below the mahogany' now means 'to dine in a formal, prestigious setting'.