dishtray

plural dishtrays

1. A tray for dishes.

   Once in a while someone would nod at me and wave, and from my corner by the dishtrays I nodded and waved back. The supervisor was very firm about clearing girls mixing with the customers.

   1981, Susan Allen Toth, “Preparation for Life”, in Blooming: A Small-Town Girlhood, Boston, Mass.; Toronto, Ont.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, pages 131–132

   3 more examples

   One and all, these college girls welcomed us as we drove into the camps, pretended amusement at our stories, helped with the entertainments at the lodges, joined us in excursions in search of mountain flowers, supplemented our diet in return for assistance with the dishtrays and drying towels, and waved, and smiled again, as we left for the next station.

   1966, J[ames] Fred Rippy, “After a Summer in the Rocky-Mountain West I Return to Tennessee”, in Bygones I Cannot Help Recalling: The Memoirs of a Mobile Scholar, Austin, Tex.: Steck-Vaughn Company, →LCCN, page 80

   In a multi-convoluted helical conveyor of the character described for transporting substantially flat-bottomed full or empty dishtrays, the combination of a supporting structure, a pair of helically-parallel track bars supported by said structure, a plurality of chain-driving sprockets, and an endless, slatted, link-chain belt comprised of a bowable and twistable link-chain, a plurality of separate, independent, free-ended, semi-flexible plastic slats, the free and deflectable ends of said slats extending transversely over and substantially beyond the track bars, said track bars disposed at an inclined angle not over the friction angle of the dishtrays upon the slats, […]

   1973 January 29, Sidney T. Heifetz, George Ran, Theodore Equipment Corporation, Helical endless-belt mechanisms for fuel or empty dishtray transporting and lifting, US Patent 3,857,476, published 31 December 1974, column 7, lines 21–33

   They held their dishtrays by their sides, each one waiting, Rupp thought, for something solid, something real, something that they could think about overnight in their hovels, something that might stir their bowels.

   2003, Edward Stone Cohen, “Sambo”, in Firewater: A Green Novel (Akashic Rural Surreal), New York, N.Y.: Akashic Books, →ISBN, page 185