Armoire: An armoire is a tall, freestanding cabinet with doors devised by the French in the 17th century. It was originally used to store armor. Modern uses include storing clothes, and today armoires often serve as entertainment centers and for computer/home office storage. Also known as wardrobe.

Bachelor’s Chest: A small-scaled chest of drawers (normally with three or four drawers) originally used to hold small items of men's apparel.

Bookcase Headboard: A headboard for a bed with space to store books, radios, clocks, and other small items. Sometimes called a storage headboard.

Bombee: A French term used to describe a chest with swelling, convex sides. The term is usually applied to case furniture, such as commodes. The style was popular during the Regence period in early-18th-century France.

Buffet: A French term for large, heavy display cupboard with open shelves, used for displaying silverware in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Canopy: Covering over a bed or other furniture, suspended by posts; generally a wood frame with fabric.

Case Goods: Casegoods is a term used for furniture that is not upholstered and is made of wood. It is especially used to describe furniture that is used in the dining room and bedroom. Pieces of furniture, such as bookcases or chests of drawers that provide interior storage space are also casegoods.

Curio Cabinet: A glass-enclosed cabinet for displaying a variety of products such as glass-ware and other collectables. Sometimes simply called a curio.

Daybed: Couch with low head and footboards, usually placed lengthwise along a wall. Removable cushions allow a daybed to serve as either a seating piece or a bed.

Dinette: Small-scaled dining furniture with a table and four to six chairs. Originally designed for kitchen use, but also used in small dining areas.

Distressing: An antiquing process to make new woods look old and used. Usually entails surface marks and indentations added during the finishing process.

Drop-Leaf Table: Type of table with hinged leaves that fold down to shorten, or up to lengthen the surface.

Dovetail: A dovetail is an interlocking fan-shaped wedge, used in wood furniture. The purpose is to join two pieces of wood at right angles. It increases strength and stability. Dovetailing is frequently used in drawers.

End Table: Small side table, used at the end of a sofa or beside a chair.

Engineered Wood: Any restructured composite of wood, including oriented strand board, particleboard, and plywood.

Faux: A term to describe anything simulated to look or feel like something it is not.

Finish: A treatment applied to wood to protect the surface, to make it more durable and resistant to stains and burns, to accentuate the natural grain, to lighten or deepen the color, to make a dull or glossy surface, or to change the color completely as by painting, lacquering, polishing, antiquing, distressing, etc.

Footboard: Supporting piece at the foot end of a bed, sometimes decorative.

Futon: A folded mattress in a frame that can be folded up for seating or down to form a sleeping surface.

Gilding: A decorative finish in which gold is applied to wood, leather, silver, ceramics, or glass. The process involves laying gold leaf or powdered gold (or silver) onto a base, such as gesso. Parcel gilding is the term used when only part of the object has been gilded.

Hardware: In cabinetry, metal handles, pulls, escutcheons, hinges, decorative push plates, etc.

Hardwood: General term for the lumber of broad-leafed or deciduous trees in contrast to evergreen or coniferous trees, which are termed softwoods.

Headboard: Panel rising above mattress at head of bed. Often supports the bed rails.

Hutch: A top cupboard usually placed above buffet or sideboard for display of plates, cups, and utensils often of Early American or country styling.

Inlay: A technique in which a design is cut out of the surface to be decorated and then filled in, flush with the surface, with other contrasting materials cut to fit exactly into these openings.

Leaf: A board or panel used as a tabletop extension. Some leaves are hinged to the table surface and must be raised to a horizontal position, as in a Pembroke or gate-leg table. Other leaves are drawn out from beneath the table surface, as in the draw table. In other tables, the top can be separated and extended so leaves can be placed in the opening.

Loveseat: An upholstered seating piece, sofa, or settee for two persons.

Nightstand: Occasional table, sometimes with cabinet, drawer, or shelf, used beside a bed to hold such items as a lamp, clock, or telephone. Also called a night table or bedside table.

Maple: A European hardwood, pale in color, which was used in marquetry during the 17th and 18th centuries. It was sometimes stained black to resemble ebony, a much more expensive wood.

Occasional Table: A small table that can be used for different purposes and moved from room to room.

Ottoman: Low upholstered seat without arms or back approximately the same height as a companion chair seat, often used as a footstool.

Platform Bed: A mattress set on top of a wood or plastic platform or pedestal. Sometimes the mattress is recessed into a frame on the top of the platform, and there is a shelf that may go partially or completely around the perimeter.

Plywood: Structural material made of very thin layers of wood bonded together with the grain of each layer, or ply, at right angles to that of the next.

Sectional: Referring generally to upholstered furniture composed of complementary sections that can be grouped in a variety or arrangements or used separately.

Sideboard: Originally an open-shelf dining room piece, literally a side board or boards. Now a piece with cabinet and/or drawers below and sometimes open shelving above for the display of plates and silver.

Sleigh Bed: A bed with large scroll-like footboard and headboard, similar to old-style sleigh fronts.

Trundle Bed: A pullout bed on casters somewhat smaller than the bed under which it is set.

Veneer: A veneer is a thin sheet of a wood of superior value or excellent grain that is glued to an inferior wood or any of the thin layers bonded together to form plywood.

Vinyl: Plastic material capable of being embossed or printed to give a wide variety of finishes.

Wicker: Strong woven matting of willow, reed, or rattan cut into different diameters and used to construct furniture, often for outdoor use.