kitchen cabinet
- noun
- /ˈkɪtʃən ˈkæbɪnɪt/
- Literature
:
gabinete
- His kitchen cabinet—the people with whom he meets at the start of every working day—has virtually unrestricted access to his office.
Examples
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I also had grand plans to have each and every cabinet and drawer in my kitchen cabinet makeover sanded.
Blog text (29) -
Last September, Gore gathered his kitchen cabinet at his residence one night for their weekly political strategy meeting.
-
Mr. DeLay has long had a kitchen cabinet of lobbyists who meet with him regularly.
Synonyms
11
5.6
A group of expert advisors who help a leader, often unofficially in politics
1
9.1
A small group of leaders in an organization who make major decisions in secret
How Official
Surface Forms
Morphology
kitchen + cabinet
The phrase is compositionally built: 'kitchen' (the room for cooking) modifies 'cabinet' to indicate a cabinet located in the kitchen, so the meaning 'cupboard for storing kitchen items' follows directly from the parts. Although 'cabinet' can also mean a political body, the locative modifier 'kitchen' disambiguates to the furniture sense, and this straightforward noun–noun composition is cross-linguistically common and predictable for learners.
Etymology
Kitchen cabinet may come from President Andrew Jackson's time. One popular story says his close friends and advisers met in the White House kitchen to give him advice, so the name kitchen plus cabinet came to mean a small group of unofficial advisers rather than the official 'cabinet'.