All 4 Uses of
laboratory
in
Babbitt
- At that moment in Zenith, two men sat in a laboratory.†
Chpt 7laboratory = a workplace where people do scientific or medical research, or produce drugs or chemicals (also used figuratively) OR (as an adjective) related to such a place
- He was permitted to kiss his wife; he saw a thin dark nurse fit the cone over her mouth and nose; he stiffened at a sweet and treacherous odor; then he was driven out, and on a high stool in a laboratory he sat dazed, longing to see her once again, to insist that he had always loved her, had never for a second loved anybody else or looked at anybody else.†
Chpt 33
- In the laboratory he was conscious only of a decayed object preserved in a bottle of yellowing alcohol.†
Chpt 33 *
- It may be that his frightened repentance of the night and morning had not eaten in, but this dehumanizing interment of her who had been so pathetically human shook him utterly, and as he crouched again on the high stool in the laboratory he swore faith to his wife ...to Zenith ...to business efficiency ...to the Boosters' Club ...to every faith of the Clan of Good Fellows.†
Chpt 33
Definitions:
-
(1)
(laboratory) a workplace where people do scientific or medical research, or produce drugs or chemicals
or (as an adjective): related to such a place -
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much more rarely, lab can be used as an abbreviated way of saying Labrador retriever. It is also a rare last name and may indicate someone's initials.