armchair

UK/ˈɑː(ɹ)mtʃɛə(ɹ)//ˈɑɹmt͡ʃɛɚ/

armchair noun: a chair with supports for the arms or elbows.

Image: CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

armchair (plural armchairs)

A chair with supports for the arms or elbows.
- I collapsed into an armchair.
- There were many wooden chairs for the bulk of his visitors, and two wicker arm-chairs with red cloth cushions for superior people. From the packing-cases had also emerged some Indian clubs,[…]; and all these articles[…]made a scattered and untidy decoration that Mrs. Clough assiduously dusted and...1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC, page 184
An upholstered chair without armrests intended for the living room

Synonyms:

easy chair
(figuratively) A position from which a casual and inexpert perspective looks out on the world.
- Evaluating possible etymologies requires a significant amount of knowledge about the speakers' lived reality […] for instance, the semantic connection between some species of plant and its use in traditional medicine may be fully transparent to a native speaker, but harder to understand from the...2025, Cid Swanenvleugel, The Pre-Roman Elements of the Sardinian Lexicon, page 44

Adjective

armchair (not comparable)

(figuratively) Remote from actual involvement (including cases where a person has retired from previously active involvement).
- armchair travels
- These days I'm an armchair detective.
(derogatory, figuratively) Unqualified or uninformed but yet giving advice, especially on technical issues, such as law, architecture, medicine, military theory, or sports; relating to such advice.
- He's just an armchair lawyer who thinks he knows a lot about the law because he reads a legal blog.
- After the game, the armchair quarterbacks talked about what they would have done differently to win.

Verb

armchair (third-person singular simple present armchairs, present participle armchairing, simple past and past participle armchaired)

To create based on theory or general knowledge rather than data.
- Research for program's subject matter is like mining gold. The more raw material we have, the more likely we are going to find gold nuggets. But this step is often overlooked and a program is "armchaired" from the office of the vice-president or vice-president of sales.1966, Sales Management - Volume 97, Issues 8-14, page 31
- The very serious question is then raised as to whether reasonable and logical distractors can be "armchaired" or whether the practice of administering a question in open-end format to obtain logical distractors is a better procedure.1970, Carmen J. Finley, Frances S. Berdie, The national assessment approach to exercise development, page 84
To theorize based on analysis of data that was gathered previously; to reflect.
- In past years, we administered this questionnaire and gave the results to the president who sat at a conference table with top management and armchaired some answers.1968, Daniel C. Pfannstiel, Barbara H. Matthews, Cooperative extension organization and administration
- Briefly it may be stated: Operations come first; concepts follow; theory aims at developing concepts, from operations, plus a nomological network for those concepts, which explains the structure of the data obtained through those operations. And this does not exclude the theorist from doing some...1976, Dato N De Gruijter, Leo J. Th. van der Kamp, Advances in Psychological and Educational Measurement, page 113

armchair meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Kannada

armchair in Hindi

chair with supports for the arms or elbows: हाथकुर्सी hāthkursī, आराम-कुर्सी ārām-kursī

armchair in Urdu

chair with supports for the arms or elbows: آرام کُرْسِی ārām kursī

armchair in Bengali

chair with supports for the arms or elbows: আর্মচেয়ার armoceẏar

armchair in Kannada

ತೋಳುಕುರ್ಚಿ

More languagesFewer languages

armchair in Arabic: كُرْسِيّ ذُو ذِرَاعَيْن kursiyy ḏū ḏirāʕayn, أَرِيكَة ʔarīka, كُرْسِيّ kursiyy
armchair in Malay: kerusi berlengan
armchair in Indonesian: kursi bersandaran, kursi berlengan
armchair in Thai: เก้าอี้นั่ง gâo-îi nâng, เก้าอี้มีเท้าแขน gâo-îi mii táao-kɛ̌ɛn
armchair in Vietnamese: ghế bành

Examples of armchair in a sentence

Armchair tourists who are used to travelling the globe with Google Earth can now use the same technology to crawl all over the masterpieces in one of the world's most famous galleries: the Prado.2009 January 13, Giles Tremlett, “Google Earth brings masterpieces from Prado museum direct to armchair art lovers”, in The Guardian...
My point here is not that these new armchair soldiers are to be criticized for failing in their moral responsibilities.2013 March 17, John Kaag, “Drones, Ethics and the Armchair Soldier”, in The New York Times Opinionator, archived from the original on 10...
E-petitions have turned us all into armchair activists, and there’s nothing wrong with that.2015 April 11, Bridget Christie, “We’re a nation of armchair activists – what’s wrong with that?”, in The Guardian, archived from the...
Armchair Investigators at Front of British Inquiry Into Spy Poisoning [title]2018 October 9, Michael Schwirtz, Ellen Barry, “Armchair Investigators at Front of British Inquiry Into Spy Poisoning”, in The New York...

All 40 example sentences with armchair

Synonyms of armchair

easy chair

Forms of armchair

Noun
plural	armchairs
alternative form	arm-chair
Verb
third-person singular present	armchairs
present participle	armchairing
past participle	armchaired
past	armchaired

Plural of armchair: armchairs

Origin of armchair

From arm + chair.

Words formed from armchair

Phrases with armchair

Questions about armchair

What does armchair mean?: Armchair means a chair with supports for the arms or elbows.
What is armchair in Hindi?: Armchair in Hindi is हाथकुर्सी (hāthkursī), आराम-कुर्सी (ārām-kursī). See Armchair meaning in Hindi.
How do you use armchair in a sentence?: Armchair tourists who are used to travelling the globe with Google Earth can now use the same technology to crawl all over the masterpieces in one of the world's most famous galleries: the Prado.
What part of speech is armchair?: Armchair can be a noun, an adjective or a verb.
How do you pronounce armchair?: Armchair is pronounced /ˈɑː(ɹ)mtʃɛə(ɹ)/ (UK).
What is the plural of armchair?: The plural of armchair is armchairs.

Words near armchair in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: armchair (page history and authors); armchair (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-armchair.ogg.

Cite this entry: “armchair.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/armchair. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.