chair
pronunciation
How to pronounce chair in British English:
UK [tʃeə(r)]
How to pronounce chair in American English:
US [tʃer]
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- Noun:
- a seat for one person, with a support for the back
- the position of professor
- the officer who presides at the meetings of an organization
- an instrument of execution by electrocution; resembles a chair
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- Verb:
- act or preside as chair, as of an academic department in a university
- preside over
Word Origin
- chair
- chair: [13] Chair comes ultimately from Greek kathédrā ‘seat’ (source also of cathedral, of course), which was a compound originally meaning literally ‘something for sitting down on’ – it was formed from katá- ‘down’ and *hed- ‘sit’. It produced Latin cathedra, which in Old French became chaiere, the source of the English word.The use of chair specifically for the seat occupied by someone presiding at a meeting dates from the mid 17th century, and its metaphorical extension to the person sitting in it, as symbolizing his or her office – as in ‘address one’s remarks to the chair’ – is virtually contemporary (‘The Chair behaves himself like a Busby amongst so many schoolboys’, Thomas Burton’s Diary, 23 March 1658); but its use as a synonym for chairperson, to avoid a distinction on grounds of sex, is a late 20th-century development.=> cathedral
- chair (n.)
- early 13c., chaere, from Old French chaiere "chair, seat, throne" (12c.; Modern French chaire "pulpit, throne;" the more modest sense having gone since 16c. with variant form chaise), from Latin cathedra "seat" (see cathedral). Figurative sense of "authority" was in Middle English, of bishops and professors. Meaning "office of a professor" (1816) is extended from the seat from which a professor lectures (mid-15c.). Meaning "seat of a person presiding at meeting" is from 1640s. As short for electric chair from 1900.
- chair (v.)
- mid-15c., "install in a chair or seat" (implied in chairing), from chair (n.); meaning "preside over" (a meeting, etc.) is attested by 1921. Related: Chaired.
Example
- 1. Charlie gripped the sides of the chair .
- 2. This year cambodia holds the rotating chair of asean .
- 3. Adjust your workstation and chair to the correct height .
- 4. Her voice came from the murky darkness around her chair .
- 5. The commission proposed that the european central bank chair this council .