核心畫面
Picture an empty flat: bare floors, blank walls, nothing to sit on. To furnish it is to carry in everything it still lacks — bed, table, chairs, a lamp — until the place is fit to live in. One way to hold the word: you are fitting something out with what it is still missing, so it can actually be used.
furnish 可以想成一間空空的房子：地板是空的、牆是空的，你把床、桌子、椅子、燈一件一件搬進去，直到它真的能住人…更多收起
furnish 可以想成一間空空的房子：地板是空的、牆是空的，你把床、桌子、椅子、燈一件一件搬進去，直到它真的能住人。一種想法是，這個字的重點不在「家具」本身，而在「把缺的補齊、讓它可以用」——先有這個畫面，後面「提供資料、提供證據」的用法就順了。From the word’s history
Furnish came into English in the mid-1400s from Old French fornir/furnir 'to do, provide, equip', and its first English sense was the broad one: to equip, fit out, provision. Furniture (1520s) grew from the same French word, and only settled into 'chairs, tables, household stuff' by the 1570s. So 'supply what is needed' is the older, wider meaning, and 'put furniture in a room' is that same act narrowed down to a house.
furnish 大約十五世紀中從古法文 fornir／furnir（做、提供、裝備）進入英文，最早的意思就是廣義的「配備、供給」。furniture 是 1520 年代從同一個法文字來的，一直到 1570 年代才固定成「桌椅家具」。所以歷史上其實是「提供所需」在先，「把家具搬進房子」是同一個動作縮小到住家的版本——兩個意思本來就是一件事。
Etymonline — etymonline.com/word/furnish (cross-checked with etymonline.com/word/furniture)
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Furnishname
- 1
A surname.
furnishnoun/ˈfɝnɪʃ/
- 1
Material used to create an engineered product.
- The resin-coated furnish is evenly spread inside the form and another metal plate is placed on top.
furnishverb/ˈfɝnɪʃ/
- 1
To provide a place with furniture, or other equipment.
- The Celebrity, by arts unknown, induced Mrs. Judge Short and two other ladies to call at Mohair on a certain afternoon when Mr. Cooke was trying a trotter on the track. The three returned wondering and charmed with Mrs. Cooke; they were sure she had had no hand in the furnishing of that atrocious house.
- Then his sallow face brightened, for the hall had been carefully furnished, and was very clean. ¶ There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.
- 2
To supply or give (something).
- […] Miniſters are ſo wiſe to leave their Proceedings to be accounted for by Reaſoners at a Diſtance, who often mould them into Syſtems, that do not only go down very well in the Coffee-Houſe, but are Supplies for Pamphlets in the preſent Age, and may probably furniſh Materials for Memoirs and Hiſtories in the next.
- [H]e took his seat at the bottom of the table, by her ladyship's desire, and looked as if he felt that life could furnish nothing greater.
- 3
To supply (somebody) with something.
- The street outside my window furnishes meager entertainment.
- For, that the ordure, which continually gathers on the skin, would ſoon ſtop the pores of it, if the ſweat were not furniſht with ſome efficacious diſſolvent to open and pierce them.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。