cupboard: [14] A cupboard was originally exactly that: a ‘board’, or table, on which cups (and other pieces of crockery or plate) were placed for display. Essentially, it was what we would now call a sideboard. The modern sense, ‘recess with doors and shelves’, did not develop until the 16th century. (An earlier, and now largely superseded, term for ‘cupboard’ was press [14]. Cabinet is roughly contemporary with cupboard in its modern sense, and closet developed this meaning in the 17th century.)
