A chest of drawers: a dressing-table with drawers. The word came in gradually, as the earlier quotations show.
1742. Miss Nancy will find it in the inner Till of my Bureau.—Richardson, ‘Pamela,’ iv. 79. (N.E.D.)
1764. A “Chest of Draws” is advertised with other things at Public Vendue.—Boston Evening Post, Jan. 30.
1772. Chests of Draws, Bureaus, Desks, &c., for sale.—Mass. Spy, April 23.
1800. Auction sale of “Bureaus, Dukes, sophas, Windsor chairs, &c.,” advertised in The Aurora (Phila.), Aug. 30.
1804. A chest of drawers, &c., advertised.—Lancaster (Pa.) Journal, March 3.
1805. A sale of beds and bedding, bureaus, tables, &c.—Id., March 29.
1806. In the rage of intoxication, they danced upon Tables, Bureaus, &c., Hallooing and cursing Democracy.—Intelligencer (Lancaster, Pa.), Dec. 30.
1818. The floor fell in an oblique direction, which had the effect of piling [the company] in heaps, together with tables, chairs, bureaus, crockery, &c.—Mass. Spy, Nov. 11.
1819. Look in the bureaus and trunks of modern men of fashion, and see the number of coats, waistcoats, pantaloons, &c.—St. Louis Enquirer, Sept. 15.
1836. His trunks and bureaus were broken open and rifled.—Phila. Public Ledger, July 7.
1851. He left a paper on his bureau, telling me to send down for a half-bushel of oysters.—Knick. Mag., xxxvii. 120 (Feb.).
1853. There’s a chest of drawers to set against the door; so you’ll be warm and free from intrusion.—Durivage, ‘Life Scenes,’ p. 48.
1856. He sticks and catches just like an old bureau-drawer.—H. B. Stowe, ‘Dred,’ chap. xxvii.
1866. The ball went dead through a house and tore a bureau all to flinders.—C. H. Smith, ‘Bill Arp,’ p. 39.
1867. Feeling somewhat tired, I lay down upon a couch in the room, directly opposite a bureau upon which was a looking-glass. As I reclined, my eye fell upon the glass, and I saw distinctly two images of myself, exactly alike, except that one was a little paler than the other.—F. B. Carpenter, ‘Six Months at the White House,’ p. 164 (N.Y.).
1890. Our bureaus were always called bureaus; but they were in part packing boxes, shelved inside, and covered with the calico which did much to hide angularities and ugliness.—Mrs. Custer, ‘Following the Guidon,’ p. 253 (N.Y.).
