lazy Susan

Lazy Susan in a Chinese restaurant

A Lazy Susan is a rotating tray, usually circular, placed on top of a table to aid in moving food on a large table or countertop.

Origin

The term "Lazy Susan" made its first written appearance in a Vanity Fair advertisement for a "Revolving Server or Lazy Susan" in 1917. Prior to that time they were called dumbwaiters, a term also applied to a type of small elevator for transporting food.^[1]

The Susan part of Lazy Susan is suggested to come from servants, who were often named Susan back in the 1700s.^[2]

Uses

The Lazy Susan is commonplace in most restaurants in China, since dishes are ordered communally making Lazy Susans omnipresent for passing food around.

Other uses

This term may also refer to corner cabinets on which the shelves are mounted on a vertical axle such that items may be retrieved by pushing on the shelves to turn them. This type is usually found in kitchens. Closed, this type of lazy Susan appears to be two normal cabinets at right angles to each other. When pushed on, the cabinet "doors" reveal the shelves, which are circular except for the ninety degree cutout where the doors are mounted.

Lazy Susan is also used to describe any type of small, hand-rotated flat platform, e.g. a rotating spice rack for a kitchen cabinet, a rotating TV/monitor platform, a rotating platform used to aid manual tasks like sculpture, model building, electronics repair and fabrication, etc. A larger and/or motor-operated rotating platform is typically referred to as a turntable instead.

In the context of maintenance engineering, the term Lazy Susan may also be used to describe a device designed for aid artisans in manual activities ^[3] as a way of avoiding Work Related Musculoskeletal Disorders (WRMDs). The term is also used in a military context to refer to manually or electronically operated weapons turntables ^[4]

References

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