From Middle English table, tabel, tabil, tabul, from Old English tabele, tabul, tablu, tabule, tabula ("board"); also as tæfl, tæfel, an early borrowing of Latin tabula.

• enPR: tāʹbəl, IPA: /ˈteɪbl̩/

table (plural tables)

1. Furniture with a top surface to accommodate a variety of uses.
   1. An item of furniture with a flat top surface raised above the ground, usually on one or more legs.

      Set that dish on the table over there, please.

      • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VI, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC ↗:

        He had one hand on the bounce bottle—and he'd never let go of that since he got back to the table—but he had a handkerchief in the other and was swabbing his deadlights with it.

      • 1963, Margery Allingham, “Foreword”, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC ↗:

        A very neat old woman, still in her good outdoor coat and best beehive hat, was sitting at a polished mahogany table on whose surface there were several scored scratches so deep that a triangular piece of the veneer had come cleanly away, […].

   2. The board or table-like furniture on which a game is played, such as snooker, billiards or draughts.
   3. A flat tray which can be used as a table.
   4. A supply of food or entertainment.

      The baron kept a fine table and often held large banquets.

   5. A service of Holy Communion.
   6. (backgammon) One half of a backgammon board, which is divided into the inner and outer table.
2. A group of people at a table, for example, for a meal, meeting or game.
   • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC ↗, [Act V, scene i], page 278 ↗, column 1:

     Alas poore Yorick […] VVhere be your Jibes now? Your Gambals? Your Songs? Your flaſhes of Merriment that were wont to ſet the Table on a Rore?

   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC ↗:

     The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again; […] . Our table in the dining-room became again the abode of scintillating wit and caustic repartee, Farrar bracing up to his old standard, and the demand for seats in the vicinity rose to an animated competition.

   1. (poker, metonym) The lineup of players at a given table.

      That's the strongest table I've ever seen at a European Poker Tour event

   2. (RPG, metonym) A group of players meeting regularly to play a campaign.
   3. (waitstaff, metonym) A group of diners at a given table or tables.

      Table 9 wants another round of beers.

      John always gets the best tips because he gets the best tables! It's not fair!

3. A two-dimensional presentation of data.
   1. A matrix or grid of data arranged in rows and columns.
   2. A collection of arithmetic calculations arranged in a table, such as multiplications in a multiplication table.

      The children were practising multiplication tables.

      Don’t you know your tables?

      Here is a table of natural logarithms.

   3. (computing, chiefly, databases) A lookup table, most often a set of vectors.
   4. (sports) A visual representation of a classification of teams or individuals based on their success over a predetermined period.
4. (musical instruments) The top of a stringed instrument, particularly a member of the violin family: the side of the instrument against which the strings vibrate.
5. The flat topmost facet of a cut diamond.

• (computing) grid, vector

• French: table
• German: Tisch
• Italian: tavola, tavolo
• Portuguese: mesa
• Russian: стол
• Spanish: mesa

• French: tableau
• German: Tabelle, Spiegel
• Italian: tabella
• Portuguese: tabela
• Russian: табли́ца
• Spanish: tabla

• French: table
• German: Tabelle
• Portuguese: tabela
• Russian: табли́ца
• Spanish: tablas

• Russian: табли́ца

table (tables, present participle tabling; simple past and past participle tabled)

1. To tabulate; to put into a table or grid. [from 15th c.]

   to table fines

2. (now, rare) To supply (a guest, client etc.) with food at a table; to feed. [from 15th c.]
   • 'April 13 1638, Henry Wotton, letter to John Milton

     At Siena I was tabled in the house of one Alberto Scipioni

3. (obsolete) To delineate; to represent, as in a picture; to depict. [17th–19th c.]
   • c. 1607, Francis Bacon, letter to Tobie Matthew

     tabled and pictured in the chambers of meditation

4. (non-US) To put on the table of a commission or legislative assembly; to propose for formal discussion or consideration, to put on the agenda. [from 17th c.]
5. (chiefly, US) To remove from the agenda, to postpone dealing with; to shelve to indefinitely postpone consideration or discussion of something. [from 19th c.]

   The legislature tabled the amendment, so they will not be discussing it until later.

   The motion was tabled, ensuring that it would not be taken up until a later date.

6. (carpentry, obsolete) To join (pieces of timber) together using coaks. [18th–19th c.]
7. To put on a table. [from 19th c.]
   • 1833 Thomas Carlyle, letter to his Mother, The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

     [A]fter some clatter offered us a rent of five pounds for the right to shoot here, and even tabled the cash that moment, and would not pocket it again.

8. (nautical) To make board hems in the skirts and bottoms of (sails) in order to strengthen them in the part attached to the bolt-rope.

• tabulate

• French: mettre la table
• Italian: presentare
• Spanish: poner sobre la mesa

• Italian: proporre
• Spanish: traer a discusión

• Italian: posporre
• Portuguese: adiar

• Portuguese: tabular
• Spanish: tabular