28 Comments
Are you sure? I think an "armoire à linge" is for storing, not for "airing", "warming", or what have you. Of course, I don't actually know what an "airing cupboard" is so am relying on reference sources:
I'm harping on this translation of "armoire" again. A linen closet is part of the architecture. A linen cabinet or linen armoire is a piece of furniture. Please clarify which usage of "armoire" is used in French. Thanks.
An armoire à linge is a linen cupboard.
http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais-anglais/armoire/5268
What's a linen cupboard? (please describe without recourse to the terms "cabinet" or "closet" owing to the confusion laid out below ;)
The only modern definition of "cupboard" here is "cabinet or closet or other piece of furniture with shelves..." Meanwhile "cabinet" is defined as "1. storage closet either separate from or built into a wall" or "2. cupboard": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cabinet and "closet" is "a private cabinet" (whatever that means): https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/closet#Noun
Oxford, incidentally, explicitly lists "wardrobe" as a kind of "closet": https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/closet
Out of this morass I feel that my presumptive personal predilection to call anything where you store linens a linen closet (out of lack of personal familiarity with any other term) has at least some justification.
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A picture is worth 1000 words, and here are 1000 pictures:
This should settle most arguments!
Before this, I had never heard of "armoire". Linen cupboard or wardrobe-yes. I put wardrobe and marked wrong. Grrrr.
- 200
Yes, I thought closet was placard, so a linen closet should be placard à linge. Is there such a thing? To me, an armoire is more like a dresser, or chest of drawers, A closet is built-in.. Although, I do have drawers also inside my built-in closet. All very confusing.
Looks like there is: http://context.reverso.net/translation/french-english/placard+%C3%A0+linge
But it's a comparatively less common term: https://goo.gl/bkabhA, whether due to reasons only of language or of architecture I don't know.
EDIT: I got industrious and looked into the architectural difference question. This is mostly about Switzerland, but gets at the point that built-in closets are much less common on that side of the Atlantic: https://www.englishforum.ch/housing-general/57844-no-closets-where-do-you-hang-clothes.html
One comment interestingly notes that the non-built-ins commonly found are unusually large by e.g. U.S. standards for non-built-ins.
- 200
How interesting, well, for myself, I always go with the most basic simple terms that I can, so I will think of placard à linge, having already learned that as closet. Thanks for your input..Good luck with the Klingon..
I don't know what either of those things are, but if the translation info I find for them are anything close to right, I don't know that they're referring to the right sort of item.
I assume a "hot press" is something that heats up? Its translations are quite different: http://context.reverso.net/translation/english-french/hot+press
If Larousse knows what it's talking about, I wouldn't be too sure about "airing cupboard," either: http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/anglais-francais/airing_cupboard/561703
- 738
My answers are
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"here is a big laundry cabinet"
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"here is a big laundry closet "
Both are rejected buy duo. Is "laundry cabinet" or "laundry closet" wrong?
Must we use "linen"?
---just a bit off the topic, as per my life, I have never seen any closets using the material linen. Have anyone seen that?
I'm unfamiliar with either "laundry cabinet" or "laundry closet." The former sounds like it might be some sort of built-in hamper, sort of the opposite of a linen closet (which is for clean linens).
A linen closet isn't a closet made of linen. It's a closet that holds linens. Consider "soccer field"; it's not a field made of soccer ;)
- 265
Try googling terms like this to see the images. I find that dictionaries often are confusing or wrong when it comes to concrete terms like this. If you search Google for a French term, you will get only the French sense of the term.
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We don't use closet. The only English usage is WC, the antiquated Water Closet or toilet.
Who is “we”? It is a regular, ordinary word for me and, I think, the majority of native speakers.
In American English we have adopted the word armoire from the French. It's a piece of furniture, which I don't think of as ugly as the pictures Google presented, but I digress. It is used as a free-standing closet which you could put a number of different types items. So, I believe that linen armoire should be accepted.
