washstand
Use Washstand in a sentence
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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washstand (ˈwɒʃˌstænd) ![[Click for IPA pronunciation guide]](http://static.sfdict.com/dictstatic/g/d/dictionary_questionbutton_default.gif) | |
| —n | |
| a piece of furniture designed to hold a basin, etc, for washing the face and hands | |
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| a gadget; dingus; thingumbob. |
| a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question. |
washstand
from the beginning of the 19th century until well into the 20th, an essential piece of bedroom furniture. The washstand consisted of a wooden structure of varying shape and complexity intended to accommodate a large basin, a pitcher, a toothbrush jar, and various other toilet accessories, frequently including one or more chamber pots housed in cupboards at the base of the structure. The top and the "splash back" that terminated the washstand were usually of marble or tiles set into a wooden frame; occasionally the basin was suspended from a circular hole cut into the table surface. A special kind of French marble known as "St. Anne's" was usually employed, as it resisted the action of the alkali in soap.
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