[see CHIMNEY sb. 1.]
1. The corner or side of an open fireplace or hearth, i.e., of the large projecting or retreating fireplace of olden times; ‘the fireside; the seat on each end of the firegrate’ (J.); familiarly treated as the place of the old, the infirm, and idle.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong., Vn Cendrier, he that keepeth the chimney corner, a sluggard.
1581. Sidney, Apol. Poetrie (Arb.), 40. A tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner.
1674. R. Godfrey, Inj. & Ab. Physic, To Rdr. Every one has the priviledg to speak his mind in his Chimney-Corner.
1820. Scott, Monast., Introd. Ep. The parson would not leave the quiet of his chimney-corner.
1866. G. Macdonald, Ann. Q. Neighb., xxxiii. (1878), 588–9 The old man is all but confined to the chimney-corner now.
2. attrib. (Cf. CHIMNEY 10 b.)
1654. R. Whitlock, Ζωοτομια, 300. To be made at length a Winters Tale, and Chimney-corner Discourse.
1727. De Foe, Syst. Magic, I. ii. (1840), 46. A chimney-corner tale, fit for a legend.
1832–4. De Quincey, Cæsars, Wks. X. 29, note. A chimney-corner politician … a mere speculator or unpractical dreamer.
1878. Emerson, Sovereignty of Ethics, in N. Amer. Rev., CXXVI. 417. But that the zealot stigmatizes as a sterile chimney-corner philosophy.
