Word.ws English Dictionary

front bench

front bench noun: in the House of Commons, either of two benches nearest the floor of the chamber, one occupied by the members of the Cabinet and the other by the Shadow Cabinet.

Noun

front bench (plural front benches)

  1. (UK) In the House of Commons, either of two benches nearest the floor of the chamber, one occupied by the members of the Cabinet and the other by the Shadow Cabinet.
    • On her preparedness to return to Labour's front bench under new Leader of the Opposition Sir Kier Starmer, she is non-committal.2020 June 3, Lilian Greenwood talks to Paul Stephen, “Rail's 'underlying challenges' remain”, in Rail, page 35
  2. Those Members of Parliament occupying the front benches.

Forms of front bench

pluralfront benches
alternative formfrontbench
alternative formfront-bench

Words formed from front bench

Questions about front bench

What does front bench mean?
Front bench means in the House of Commons, either of two benches nearest the floor of the chamber, one occupied by the members of the Cabinet and the other by the Shadow Cabinet.
What part of speech is front bench?
Front bench is a noun.
What is the plural of front bench?
The plural of front bench is front benches.

Words near front bench in the dictionary

  1. Fronsac
  2. Fronsacs
  3. front
  4. front and center
  5. front and centre
  6. front bench
  7. front bencher
  8. front benchers
  9. front benches
  10. front bottom
  11. front bottoms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: front bench (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.

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