Young Brunette Girl With A Vase Shows Off At Home On The Commode

In the English-speaking , commode passed into London cabinet-makers' parlance by the mid-eighteenth century, to describe chests of drawers with gracefully curved fronts, and sometimes with shaped sides as well, perceived as being in the "French" taste. Thomas Chippendale employed the term "French Commode Tables" to describe designs in The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Director (1753), and Ince and Mayhew illustrated a "Commode Chest of drawers", plate xliii, in their Universal System of Household Furniture, 1759-62. John Gloag notes that Commode expanded to describe any piece of furniture with a serpentine front, such as a dressing table, or even a chair seat. Gloag points out that Thomas Shearer's designs for two "commode dressing chests" illustrated in The Cabinet-Makers' London Book of Prices, 1788, plate 17, are repeated, but as "serpentine dressing chests", in The Prices of Cabinet Work, 1797 edition.
The term "commode" is also a rurally used colloquial synonym for a toilet in the United States. This word was commonly heard in the 20th century but seems to be falling out of favor and has become uncommon to rare.