''cheval glass'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260717141042-00-⌔

cheval glass - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

cheval glass (plural cheval glasses)

• A long mirror, mounted on a swivel in a frame, allowing it to be tilted.
  • ✤ Synonym: cheval mirror
  • ✤ It was a large room, […] furnished, among other things, with a cheval-glass and a business table, and looking out upon the court by three dusty windows barred with iron.¹
  • ✤ Next, in the course of their review of the chamber, the searchers came to the cheval-glass, into whose depths they looked with an involuntary horror. […]²
  • ✤ And Zuleika’s great cheval-glass stood ready to reflect her. Always it travelled with her, in a great case specially made for it. It was framed in ivory, and of fluted ivory were the slim columns it swung between. Of gold were its twin sconces, and four tall tapers stood in each of them.³
  • ✤ Next to the cheval-glass, Kit noticed a pale dressing-gown, of all-but-insubstantial chiffon, not draped over a chair but standing erect, […].⁴

Etymology

From French cheval (“supporting frame”, literally “horse”) (see chevalet) + glace (“mirror”).

Pronunciation

Printed 2026-07-17.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Incident of the Letter”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 45: ↩

2. 1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Last Night”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, pages 86–87: ↩

3. 1911, Max Beerbohm, chapter II, in Zuleika Dobson ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

4. 2006, Thomas Pynchon, “Bilocations”, in Against the Day, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, →ISBN, page 542: ↩