Chippendale names a style of furniture from the 1700s: chairs, tables, and cabinets with graceful curved shapes, careful carving, and fine detail, often in dark wood such as mahogany. It is a smart, slightly showy word — you meet it in antique shops, museums, and house magazines, not in everyday chat about a plastic chair. The style is named after Thomas Chippendale (1718–1779), an English cabinet-maker whose pattern book taught other makers how to work in his manner. So Chippendale furniture is not only pieces he made with his own hands; it is furniture in that look. Though actually, people sometimes say Chippendale for anything old and carved and English-looking, a bit more loosely than a museum would. It has nothing to do with a chip of wood.