cabinet

Etymology

From cabin + -et, influenced by French cabinet. In sense of “a government group”, compare salon, also named for a room used to gather.

noun

1. A storage closet either separate from, or built into, a wall.
2. A cupboard.
   ‘[…] There's every Staffordshire crime-piece ever made in this cabinet, and that's unique. The Van Hoyer Museum in New York hasn't that very rare second version of Maria Marten's Red Barn over there, nor the little Frederick George Manning—he was the criminal Dickens saw hanged on the roof of the gaol in Horsemonger Lane, by the way—’ 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 3, in The China Governess
3. The upright assembly that houses a coin-operated arcade game, a cab.
4. (historical) A size of photograph, specifically one measuring 3⅞" by 5½".
   Holmes took a note of it. “One other question,” said he. “Was the photograph a cabinet?” 1891, Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal In Bohemia, Norton, published 2005, page 19
5. A group of advisors to a government or business entity.
6. (politics, often capitalized) In parliamentary and some other systems of government, the group of ministers responsible for creating government policy and for overseeing the departments comprising the executive branch.
   Lincoln had a great deal of trouble with his Cabinet because some of them got it into their heads that they, and not the President, were the policy-makers. James K. Polk had the same difficulty with his Cabinet. Franklin Roosevelt never had any difficulty with his Cabinet for the simple reason that he himself, in my opinion, spent too much time doing the work that should have been delegated to the Cabinet. 1955, Harry S Truman, Memoirs of Harry S. Truman: Year of Decisions, volume I, Signet Books, published 1965, →OCLC, →OL, page 364
   1. (Kentucky) A cabinet-level agency in the executive branch; that is, an agency headed by a member of the governor's cabinet.
      The executive branch of Kentucky state government is structured on a program cabinet system consisting of 14 program cabinets, each headed by a secretary, who is appointed by the Governor. The program cabinets listed below and the agencies within each cabinet are designated in the statutes. 2003, A Handbook for Gubernatorial Transition in Kentucky, Legislative Research Commission, page 49
7. (archaic) A small chamber or private room.
8. (often capitalized) A collection of art or ethnographic objects.
9. (dialectal, Rhode Island) Milkshake.
   One of Rhode Island's most famous beverages is the Awful Awful, an enormous 32-ounce, rich, creamy milk shake sold at the Newport Creamery stores, a soda fountain and casual restaurant chain. This ultra-thick cabinet is "awful big and awful good," thus the name. 2012, Linda Beaulieu, Providence & Rhode Island Cookbook: Big Recipes from the Smallest State, page 268
10. (obsolete) A hut; a cottage; a small house.
11. An enclosure for mechanical or electrical equipment.