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Learning in Literature

press n. a large cupboard, usually built into a recess in the wall

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“press n. a large cupboard, usually built into a recess in the wall”

30th November 2007

Press is found both in Irish English and in Scots in modern use, though it was also used in England from the time of Chaucer until the eighteenth century. In Scottish sources, it is first recorded in documents dating from the late fifteenth century, and is frequently found in inventories of household goods. ‘Ane pres of aik for buikkis’ is mentioned in an Aberdeen document from 1519, while another from Edinburgh in 1585 describes ‘ane greit pres for clais’. Scottish presses appear in all shapes and sizes, and although they can be free-standing, they are more usually built into walls. The related term, press-bed, is a bed built into a wall and sometimes shut off behind wooden doors.

The word was borrowed from Old French presse, which had developed the sense ‘a cupboard for clothes’ by the late fourteenth century. Several different meanings of this word were borrowed into English and Scots. It could also denote a device for pressing, or a crowd, and was taken up as a term for the printing press, when printing was invented in the late fifteenth century.

Built-in presses were often a feature of formal rooms. In 1767, the Caledonian Mercury described a “Dwelling House … consisting of five good fire rooms�, with “a closet to every room, presses, and other conveniences�. Literature too has its fair share of presses. Robert Burns uses the word in his description of Alloway’s Auld Haunted Kirk in Tam o’ Shanter (1790): “Coffins stood round like open presses, That shaw’d the dead in their last dresses�. And one of Sir Walter Scott’s letters, written in 1817, provides an insight into his word-choice. He wrote: “I don’t mean a formal press, with a high door, but some crypt, or, to speak vulgarly, cupboard, to put away bottles of wine�.