Meanings
plural ice-cream chairs
- 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 262 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 186I'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
ice-cream chair. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ice-cream%20chair
“ice-cream chair.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ice-cream%20chair. Accessed November 5, 2026.
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.