ice-cream chair

noun

A lightweight armless chair with a circular seat and wire back.

Meanings

nounice-cream chair (plural ice-cream chairs)

plural ice-cream chairs

  1. A lightweight armless chair with a circular seat and wire back.

    At the small table he grasps its matching ice-cream chair opposite Cossetti's, sits and palms a worn deck of cards.

    2012, Georgette Beck, The Song of Sylvania Square, page 26
    2 more examples

    Another innovative metal form was the “ice-cream” chair, so called because its portability and inexpensiveness made it practical for use in luncheonettes and ice-cream parlors everywhere.

    1985, Marshall B. Davidson, Elizabeth Stillinger, The American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, page 186

    I'd worn a pale yellow blouse and skirt for Grandma's service and now I looked like a Neiman-Marcus sack that had been dragged ostentatiously around the rest of the mall, stuffed with items from Women's Tall & Oversize, crumpled into an ice-cream chair at the food court, and dipped into a fountain while searching for pennies to throw.

    2008, Joe Coomer, One Vacant Chair: A Novel, page 55

Origin

From the use of this type of chair in ice cream parlors.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

ice-cream chair. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ice-cream%20chair

MLA

“ice-cream chair.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ice-cream%20chair. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “ice-cream chair,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ice-cream%20chair.

Source: ice-cream chair on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.