waiting-room

waiting-room (plural waiting-rooms)

1. Dated form of waiting room.
   • 1817, Henry Horne, Elements of criticism:

     In the third place, by its situation it serves only for a waiting-room, and a passage to the principal apartments, instead of being reserved, as it ought to be, for entertaining company […]

   • 1845, B[enjamin] Disraeli, chapter III, in Sybil; or The Two Nations. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, book IV, page 166:

     The division bell was still ringing; peers and diplomatists and strangers were turned out; members came rushing in from library and smoking-room; some desperate cabs just arrived in time to land their passengers in the waiting-room.

   • 1875, Bret Harte, “Brown of Calaveras”, in The Tales of the Argonauts‎:

     "Look keerfully arter that baggage, Kernel," said the expressman, with affected concern, as he looked after Colonel Starbottle, gloomily bringing up the rear of the triumphant procession to the waiting-room. Mr. Hamlin did not stay for dinner.

   • 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 199, column 2:

     Her dress was as plain as an umbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room.

   • c. 1900, O. Henry, The Ferry of Unfulfilment:

     She walked into the waiting-room of the ferry, and up the stairs, and by a marvellous swift, little run, caught the ferry-boat that was just going out.

   • 1933, James Ian Arbuthnot Frazer as "Shamus Frazer", Acorned Hog, page 78:

     Over on that platform's the general waiting-room,... and over there's the Gentlemen's, and, any'ow, everythink's written up.

   • 1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, published 1959, →OCLC:

     The waiting-room was now less empty than Watt had at first supposed, to judge by the presence, some two paces to Watt's fore, and as many to his right, of what seemed to be an object of some importance.

   • 1981, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary, Section One, London: Heinemann, page 111:

     There his chains would be removed and he would be ushered into the waiting-room for a five-minute chat with his wife surrounded on all sides by security men and civilian-clad prison warders.