rusbank, noun

/ˈrəsbaŋk//ˈrœsbaŋk/
Forms:
Also rus’-bank, rust-bank.
Plurals:
rusbanks, rusbanke/ˈrəsbaŋkə/, and formerly rusbanken.
Origin:
Afrikaans, DutchShow more Afrikaans, rus (Dutch rust) rest + bank bench.
1. A long wooden settle with back and seat made usually of woven leather thongs (see riempie noun sense 1 a), but also occasionally of cane. Also attributive.
1868 W.R. Thomson Poems, Essays & Sketches 167With a waive [sic] of the hand in the direction of the rustbank — the sofa, or apology for it — at the other end of the room, she says ‘Zit!’
1882 J. Nixon Among Boers 202You are requested to place yourself on the seat of honour or ‘rustbank’, which is a long seat, something like what is called the ‘lang settle’ in Yorkshire.
1894 E. Glanville Fair Colonist 96They went into a cool front room, plainly furnished with Madeira-made cane chairs for coolness, and a rustbank, or couch of thongs interwoven.
1902 W. Dower Early Annals of Kokstad 25The few very rough seats and the rust banken..were occupied by the men, the women sat on the floor.
1910 D. Fairbridge That Which Hath Been (1913) 301Caught sight of the worthy burgher, and crossing the room, sat down next to him on the rust-bank.
1910 D. Fairbridge That Which Hath Been (1913) 301 [see huisvrou].
1939 S. Cloete Watch for Dawn 29How alike all these Boer houses were. Each had the same rough, home-made riempie-seated rus-banks, the same beds, the same tables.
1948 H.C. Bosman in L. Abrahams Unto Dust (1963) 58There am I sitting on the rusbank next to her, wearing my best clothes and my veldskoens rubbed smooth with sheep’s fat.
1965 M.G. Atmore Cape Furn. 77At all times the rusbank has been a ‘multiple chair’ in which the form was copied from the single chair of the time.
1971 Baraitser & Obholzer Cape Country Furn. 101Although Cape country rusbanks are mainly similar in style to Cape chairs, the spindle chair and transitional Tulbagh chair have no complete counterpart in rusbanke.
1971 Daily Dispatch 8 Sept. 18Old Rusbank-type Lounge Suite.
1987 G. Viney Col. Houses 102The stinkwood rusbank is Cape eighteenth-century.
2. transferred sense. A brick or plaster seat built into the end of the verandah of a Cape Dutch house. See also stoep sense 1 a.
1910 D. Fairbridge That Which Hath Been (1913) 229Drowsily smoking on the brick rust-bank at the end of his high stoep.
1915 D. Fairbridge Torch Bearer 157The stoeps were paved with large red tiles or blue slates, and some of them were rounded off with gracefully carved rust-banks.
1935 P. Smith Platkops Children 76After that was a long white house with a big stoep an’ rus’-banks at each end.
A long wooden settle with back and seat made usually of woven leather thongs (see riempie noun sense 1 a), but also occasionally of cane. Also attributive.
A brick or plaster seat built into the end of the verandah of a Cape Dutch house.
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18681987

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Ruiterwag, nounn.rusper, nounn.
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