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Glite Dictionary
wedding chest

wedding chest

6.7
A large wooden box used to keep clothes and household items before marriage
  • noun
translation icon : baúl de boda
  • The afghan is one I made as a girl and stored in my wedding chest.

Examples

  • She carefully opened her wedding chest to reveal the beautiful linens she had collected over the years.

  • The antique wedding chest was filled with cherished items passed down from her grandmother.

  • On their wedding day, they placed gifts and mementos inside the wedding chest to symbolize their new life together.

Synonyms

hope chest
vswedding chest
  • Archaic
3 7.0

A chest where a young woman keeps clothes and linens for her future home

is specifically part of a formal trousseau for the bride

Surface Forms

wedding chest singular
wedding chests plural

Morphology

wedding + chest

The meaning is directly and compositionally derived from 'wedding' (relating to marriage) + 'chest' (a box for storing things): a box used to hold items for a wedding or a bride's trousseau. This concept is cross-linguistically common (e.g., trousseau/hope chest) and follows ordinary noun-noun compound patterns, so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily infer the meaning.

Etymology

The noun wedding chest comes from an old custom: a bride would fill a decorated chest with clothes, linens and keepsakes before her wedding. That's why wedding chest means 'a chest used to store items a bride collected before marriage'.