Christmas is coming… How is your war chest???

ENGLISH LESSON
This is our last post in 2014. And we’re going to look at nominal collocations in which chest is preceded by another noun.  Here is the list with the top 20 nouns produced by COCA (www.americancorpus.org)

• Tom with his big belly, his barrel chest.
• He was a sturdy, broad-shouldered black man with a barrel chest and, oddly, one of the softest-spoken people I knew.
• He bowed again, a laugh rumbling deep in his barrel chest. 

• She stared at his heaving chest. Thank god, she had come just in time.
• A sweat broke out over Andrew; his shirt clung to his back and his heaving chest.
• New sounds erupted. They rose from deep in the baby’s heaving chest.

• Val began draping silk stockings over the open lid of a cedar chest.
• Madeline pointed at a small pine chest against the wall.
• His carved mahogany chest shone in shadow and light.
• Nancy chose the late-19th-century mirrored oak chest for its romantic presentation.

 

• He takes a bottle of Gatorade from the ice chest at the foot of the folding table where a scattering of apples and plums lie on a bed of rapidly melting ice.
• After cleaning the animal and reducing it sufficiently to fit into the giant ice chest in the back, we drive on farther into the country.
• When we arrived at Leonard’s place, we got an ice chest and filled it with the ice and the beer.

• It was a dirty silver box, like a miniature treasure chest.
• If it’s a pirate treasure chest, I’m keeping that to myself!
• He grabs two pirates and shoves them into the treasure chest.

Medicine chest

• I need your assistance now in replenishing my medicine chest.
• In the bathroom, she opens the medicine chest, picks up men’s toiletries.
• Ruth replaced the cap on the aspirin bottle and put it into the medicine chest.

•  Tony took a step closer. “Your hope chest? I thought they were much bigger.”
• Venus ran her fingertips across the top of the hope chest. The inscription Love and Marriage was carved over the inlaid heart.
• She’d kept the trunk since she was a young thing, cherishing it like a hope chest. Instead of putting away linens and finery for an impending marriage — prospects were too dim for that — Emma had stuffed the steamer with magazines, a crumpled atlas or two, and a bundle of vintage postcards from Rome, Paris, and London that she’d happened upon once at a flea Market.

• And she’s obviously a doll in a toy chest with a real life doll.
• A toy chest should have safety hinges, so it can’t close on your child’s fingers (or neck).
• I was not allowed to bring playmates home, or to take more than one item from my toy chest at a time.

• The unknown maker of your rare Pennsylvania-German blanket chest worked in Lebanon County, Pa., from 1770 to 1810.
• There are several different models, including one that doubles as a blanket chest or coffee table.
• BLANKET CHEST Can you help me identify this chest that has been in my family for more than 100 years?

• The linen chest was thrown open and a pile of iodine-stained bedsheets lay on the table.
• Knowing his vessel was doomed, Capt. William Foster opened his linen chest and invited people to help themselves to linen or money, and then ordered everyone to save themselves as best they could.
• I opened a drawer in Totty’s wide linen chest and looked at the combs and brushes, the tubes of salve.

Tool chest

• Martin removed a flashlight from his tool chest and stuck it into the belt around his waist.
• The man pulled a ski rope from his pickup’s tool chest, tossed an end to the photographer and hoisted him up the muddy bank.
• Buy a good rolling steel tool chest to hold them and the other tools you will accumulate over time.

 

Tea chest

• An electric kettle stood in the fireplace, and on a tea chest were two mugs and a bottle of milk.
• She left her daughter a mahogany tea table and tea chest.

Sea chest
Now, this is obviously not a chest where you keep the sea… but a chest you take on sea trips…

• Leading me into his study, he opened the lid of a sea chest.
• Mrs. Fillion, I know my sea chest is already here, but I believe I will stay at the Mulberry this time
• For a while there was nothing much in that room but my father’s sea chest from the Navy.

• In some applications, a single, large raw-water strainer or a sea chest built into the bottom of the boat will service multiple systems in place of several smaller units.
• Sea chest seawater system has two filters and only one through-hull.
• All water intakes come off of a sea chest and there are three seacocks, all grouped together.

https://navy.memorieshop.com/Design-Details/Reservoir.html

War chest

Overall, the modern meaning is some type of fund, as you can see in the examples below:

• And he was looking to basically build a campaign war chest, and he gave this pitch to these guys.
• The company raised a war chest of $16 billion and minted a small army of millionaires and billionaires.
• On May 10, Europeans bailed out Greece, authorized a euro750 billion war chest to protect currencies, and authorized the European Central Bank to intervene
• She was an unknown to most voters and needed the war chest to get her message out through television ads and billboards.
• The lack of a competitive war chest, however, doesn’t mean Broun is about to lose his seat in November.
• It helped Schulze that during recent years Best Buy had built up a war chest of $1 billion.

Community chest

• The tax code defines ” charitable ” organizations as: # Corporations, and any community chest, fund, or foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes,
• Nonetheless, by 1924, pressured by the Rochester Community Chest, which could see no reason to fund duplicate services, the separate German and Russian Jewish associations merged into the Jewish Welfare Council.
• One year she would run the Sunday School, another year the women’s division of the Community Chest.

• Make up your own Community Chest and Chance cards.
• This high-end reproduction ($99.95) is a treasure of original artwork, Chance and Community Chest cards, title deeds and property colors, original brass-colored tokens, and wood houses and hotels.

 

Community Chest cards (yellow) and Chance cards (Orange)

• He forced the Republican Party to bloat his son’s campaign chest to $1 million.
• Because he has a reputed campaign chest of some $21 million, there is already talk of a presidential bid in 2004.
• Texas Senator Phil Gramm claimed a $20 million campaign chest was the best friend in politics.

But it can also refer to a piece of furniture, originally made to breakdown or fold for traveling easily :

• Those of his finished works M’sieu cherished too greatly to send forth, he locked in his old campaign chest, with several tattered standards and a sword he had worn in battles with Protestants before he came out to the Anduves.
• Thus, instead of a simple campaign chest, a wealthy officer might commission a large elaborate chest of drawers with leather-lined escritoire, secret drawer, bookshelves, and a looking glass.
• I ventured into the keeping room to pick the lock of the campaign chest, as oft I did, for the sole purpose of examining, however furtively and briefly, the pictures and notes stored within.  

Any furniture specifically made to breakdown or fold for ease of travel can be described as campaign furniture.

And the last one is… works chest.  Sounds strange, doesn’t it?  It should, because works is not a noun but a verb as you can see in the examples below:

• POWER PUNCH # WORKS CHEST, SHOULDERS, AND BACK.
• 4 SEESAW # WORKS CHEST, SHOULDERS, ARMS, AND CORE.
• 8 SUPERWOMAN works chest and lower back.

All examples in the COCA are related to body-building. Works describes where the device (Power Punch – Seesaw – Superwoman) acts on your body (chest, shoulders, back, arms, core, lower back).
Sorry for this lengthy post, but that is what corpus-driven research is all about: it keeps showing you new things all the time… and I just couldn’t resist sharing them with you.
Have a wonderful Holiday Season. Happy NewYear!  See you in 2015!

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Stella E. O. Tagnin professora associada do Departamento de Letras Modernas, FFLCH, da USP. Embora aposentada, continua orientando em nível de pós-graduação nas áreas de Tradução, Terminologia, Ensino e Aprendizagem, sempre com base na Lingüística de Corpus. É coordenadora do Projeto CoMET.e-mail: seotagni@usp.br.