Etymology

tallboy

T1A1L1L1B3O1Y4

Today it means: A tall chest of drawers, or combination of chest on chest, or chest with a small wardrobe on top. Usually with low bracket feet but always resulting in a tall piece of furniture. Full definition →

French bois
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The story

  1. French · derived frombois“wood”
  2. English todaytallboy

By surface analysis, tall + boy, but the furniture sense may have been originally modeled after lowboy, related to French bois (“wood”).

Words from the same roots

Frenchbois all →

boislowboyBois Brule

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.