1. a small elevator used to carry food, dishes, or other items between floors in a building
2. a portable stand or table with shelves used for serving food
Usage: historical

Examples

• The restaurant uses a dumbwaiter to send meals from the kitchen to the dining room upstairs.
• She loaded the dirty dishes into the dumbwaiter and sent them down to the kitchen.
• The old mansion had a dumbwaiter connecting the basement wine cellar to the main floor.
• The waiter wheeled the wooden dumbwaiter to our table with dessert on the top shelf.
• Installing a dumbwaiter made it much easier to transport laundry between floors.
• The antique dumbwaiter had three rotating shelves for displaying fine china.