Word.ws English Dictionary

dumbwaiter

Syllables: dumb·wait·er/ˈdʌmˌweɪtəɹ/

dumbwaiter noun: a small elevator used to move food etc. from one floor of a building to another.

Noun

dumbwaiter (plural dumbwaiters)

  1. A small elevator used to move food etc. from one floor of a building to another.
    • When writing he had a copyin machine: while he was a-writin he wouldn't suffer nobody to come in his room: had a dumb-waiter: when he wanted anything he had nothin to do but turn a crank and the dumb-waiter would bring him water or fruit on a plate or anything he wanted.1951, Isaac Jefferson, chapter 9, in Memoirs Of A Monticello Slave, University Of Virginia Press, page 27
  2. (obsolete) A table or set of trays on rollers used for serving food.
    • Sauces, wines, all the accessories we wanted, and all of the best, were given out by our host from his dumbwaiter; and when they had made the circuit of the table, he always put them back again.1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter VII, in Great Expectations […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 110
  3. (obsolete) A lazy Susan.

Forms of dumbwaiter

pluraldumbwaiters
alternative formdumb waiter
alternative formdumb-waiter

Origin of dumbwaiter

From dumb (“unable to speak”) + waiter, originally separate words and describing the portable table's inability to relate gossip after the meal. By the use of the term to describe small service elevators in American homes in the 1840s, it simply meant dumb as “mechanical”, “unable to speak at all”.

Questions about dumbwaiter

What does dumbwaiter mean?
Dumbwaiter means a small elevator used to move food etc. from one floor of a building to another.
What part of speech is dumbwaiter?
Dumbwaiter is a noun.
How do you pronounce dumbwaiter?
Dumbwaiter is pronounced /ˈdʌmˌweɪtəɹ/ (US).
What is the plural of dumbwaiter?
The plural of dumbwaiter is dumbwaiters.

Words near dumbwaiter in the dictionary

  1. dumbstruck
  2. dumbtard
  3. dumbtards
  4. Dumbuck
  5. Dumbudgery
  6. dumbwaiter
  7. dumbwaiters
  8. dumbwalking
  9. dumby
  10. Dumbya
  11. dumdum

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dumbwaiter (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-ca-dumbwaiter.oga, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-dumbwaiter.wav.

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