A console table is a table whose top surface is supported by
corbel
In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the s ...
s or
bracket
A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...
s rather than by the usual four legs. It is thus similar to a supported
shelf and is not designed to serve as a stand-alone surface. It is frequently used as
pier table
A pier table is a table designed to be placed against a wall, either between two windows or between two columns. It is also known as a console table (french: console, "support bracket"), although furniture historians differentiate the two types, n ...
(which may have legs of any variety), to abut a
pier wall.
The term
console
Console may refer to:
Computing and video games
* System console, a physical device to operate a computer
** Virtual console, a user interface for multiple computer consoles on one device
** Command-line interface, a method of interacting with ...
derives from the compound
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
verb ''consolor'' "to alleviate, lighten", from the verb ''solor'', "to assuage, soothe, relieve, mitigate", plus the preposition ''con/com/cum'', "with".
[Cassell's Latin Dictionary, Marchant, J. R. V, & Charles, Joseph F., (Eds.), Revised Edition, 1928]
References
{{commons category, Console tables
Tables (furniture)