A chair is a raised surface used to sit on, commonly for use by one person. Chairs are most often supported by four legs and have a back; however, a chair can have three legs or could have a different shape.
A chair without a back or arm rests is a stool, or when raised up, a bar stool. A chair with arms is an armchair and with folding action and inclining footrest, a recliner. A permanently fixed chair in a train or theater is a seat or, in an airplane, airline seat; when riding, it is a saddle and bicycle saddle, and for an automobile, a car seat or infant car seat. With wheels it is a wheelchair and when hung from above, a swing.
A chair for more than one person is a couch, sofa, settee, or "loveseat"; or a bench. A separate footrest for a chair is known as an ottoman, hassock or pouffe.
Read more about Chair: History of The Chair, Materials, Design and Ergonomics, Chair Seats, Standards and Specifications, Accessories, Chairs As Sculptural and Art Forms, In Language
Famous quotes containing the word chair:
“Genghis Khan, in his usual jodhpurs accessorized with whip, straddled a canvas chair and gloated upon the fairyland he had built. Journalists, photographers, secretaries, sycophants, script girls, and set dressers milled and stirred around him, activity ... irresistibly reminiscent of the movement of maggots upon rotting meat.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Come leave the loathed stage,
And the more loathsome age,
Where pride and impudence in faction knit
Usurp the chair of wit:
Indicting and arraigning every day,
Something they call a play.
Let their fastidious, vain
Commission of the brain,
Run on and rage, sweat, censure, and condemn:
They were not made for thee, less thou for them.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)