file cabinet
15
2.1
- noun
- /ˈfaɪl ˈkæbɪnɪt/
- US
:
archivador
- The accountant organized all the paperwork in the file cabinet to make it easier to find documents.
- desks and file cabinets
Successful people have filed in their file cabinet that are files that lead to success.
- Successful people have filed in their file cabinet that are files that lead to success.
- I'm about to about to clog up a file cabinet.
Examples
-
A large dingy room bulging with file cabinets and dilapidated desks.
Fiction book (1992) -
Papers and reports were stacked on every horizontal surface since the file cabinets were full.
Fiction book (1992) -
Found this in a file cabinet.
-
Is there some kind of file cabinet there?
-
In my office file cabinet...
-
Most of those end up in the little round file cabinet I keep on the floor over there, you know?
-
Must have fallen down behind the file cabinet years ago.
-
You keep 'em in the file cabinet for three years, and then you cut 'em loose.
Fiction book (2000) -
This is just half of the file cabinets that I have.
-
I rushed over and rummaged around in the file cabinet until I found her old record.
Fiction book (1991)
Synonyms
168
1.3
A piece of furniture with shelves or drawers for storing things
12
2.1
A piece of office furniture with drawers for storing paper files
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'file' (a collection of documents) with 'cabinet' (a piece of storage furniture); a file cabinet is simply a cabinet for files. This straightforward noun–noun composition is common cross-linguistically and follows regular English compounding patterns, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will understand it.
Etymology
The compound noun file cabinet comes from the simple picture of a cabinet full of files. A file is a set of papers and a cabinet is a piece of furniture with drawers, so the name literally means furniture to 'store' and organize 'documents', which is why it refers to the drawer unit used for papers today.