Also -onnier, -onniere, -oniere, cheffonier. [a. F. chiffonnier, -ière rag-gatherer, transf. ‘a piece of furniture with drawers in which women put away their needle-work, cuttings of cloth, etc.’ (Littré).]
1. A piece of furniture, consisting of a small cupboard with the top made so as to form a sideboard.
1806. C. K. Sharpe, Lett. (1888), I. 251. Driven out into the wide world with a small helpless family of chiffoniers, writing-tables and footstools.
1831. Cat’s Tail, 28. Littered table and chiffonnière.
1836–9. Dickens, Sk. Boz (1850), 108/1. Rosewood chiffoniers.
1844. Alb. Smith, Adv. Mr. Ledbury (1856), II. ii. 196. The rout cakes are in the chiffonière.
1851. Times, 2 April, 12/6. Cheffoniers, pier tables, rocking chairs.
ǁ 2. A rag-picker; a collector of scraps. (Consciously Fr., and usually so spelt.)
1856. Sat. Rev., II. 568/2. Play the part of political chiffonniers. Ibid. (1861), 14 Dec., 620. All kinds of odds and ends, scraps and rubbish, fished up as it were by the literary chiffonnier.
1883. W. H. Bishop, in Harper’s Mag., 829/1. Swarms of chiffoniers gather around it [the old pier] to pick out such scraps of value as they may before they are washed away by the tide.
