When the movie appeared based on C.S. Lewis’ book, The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, I can’t have been the only one who noticed that the American meaning of “wardrobe” gives the title an unitentionally humorous spin. “Wardrobe” in AE means “the clothes that one owns”, and by extension, one’s taste in clothing. If you disapprove of someone’s wardrobe, you’re disapproving of their fashion sense. But in BE, if you disapprove of a wardrobe you’re disparaging of a piece of furniture, or a closet.
So my question is this: In BE, does “wardrobe” ever mean the clothes in the closet, rather than the closet itself? Are there some British dialects where this is the case, and others where it is not? Does it mean only a freestanding cabinet to hold clothes, or can it be a built in closet too?
I disagree wholeheartedly with your assertion that in AE wardrobe only means the clothes that one owns", and by extension, one’s taste in clothing. I was raised in New York and as far back as I can remember wardrobe could mean either one’s clothing or the “cabinet”. The meaning was determined by context.
I suspect this is one that varies with geography and age, even in the US. My East Coast grandmother always called the box with doors that stands in the room “a wardrobe”, and since all the houses we had were Victorian or older, that was the only thing besides hooks and dressers to put your clothes in - there were no closets in the rooms.
My midwest family, OTOH, all had closets - some big, some little, but all made out of drywall, little teeny rooms within the bedroom with rods to hang stuff from and usually a shelf or two above. The dresser is still a stand alone chest of drawers for the folding clothes. Newer housing, you see.
One friend of mine had a piece of furniture with a door on the right side that opened to reveal a hanging spot, and a series of drawers on the left side. I never knew what it was called, but because we loved Narnia, we called it “the wardrobe” (and spent more time inside it than out, much to her mother’s conternation.)
Nowadays in furniture, “armoires” are becoming popular - furniture with several drawers on the bottom and doors that open to reveal a hanging bar on top. We also have a “computer armoire” and an “entertainment armoire” - similar boxes with doors that open to reveal shelves for computor/monitor/printer or tv/dvd/cable box.
The dictionary tells me an “armoire” is “A large, often ornate cabinet or wardrobe.”
But I generally think of “wardrobe” as either the clothing or the storage thereof, whether it’s a box or a room. I used to do costuming for college and community theater, and one could get a piece of wardrobe out of the wardrobe in Wardrobe.
In American English, “wardrobe” nearly always means “one’s inventory of clothing, taken as a unit.” “Wardrobe” with the meaning “a piece of furniture for the purpose of storing hanging garments, built in the form of a vertical box with doors, normally with a dowel a few inches below the top, and sometimes with a shelf above the dowel,” is becoming obsolete, though it’s still understood by some people (like me and Why Not). I don’t recall every having heard it used as a synonym for “clothes closet.”
“Wardrobe” for “cabinet for hanging clothes” isn’t all that common in America, but that’s because almost everyone has built-in closets, and those aren’t called wardrobes. The cabinet-for-clothing is still a wardrobe, it just isn’t very common to have one. And a cabinet-for-something-else is called an armoire, thanks to furniture stores.
I had a roommate who had a lovely antique wardrobe, and that was all anyone ever called it that I remember.
I’m with BwanaBob on this one. While the metaphorical meaning of “range of clothing available” or “taste in clothing” is more common, there is no reason to conclude that in American English, it is the automatic or effectively only meaning of the word.
Anyway, so far as I can tell, Ikea does pretty good business in America selling wardrobes under that name.
OK, so there appears the difference between the continents. The latter is a ‘walk-in wardrobe’ in Britain. (And FWIW closet is only something which Tom Cruise isn’t in …)
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