Definition of "cabinet"

‘[…] There's every Staffordshire crime-piece ever made in this cabinet, and that's unique. The Van Hoyer Museum in New York hasn't that very rare second version of Maria Marten's Red Barn over there, nor the little Frederick George Manning—he was the criminal Dickens saw hanged on the roof of the gaol in Horsemonger Lane, by the way—’

1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 3, in The China Governess‎

It is a perfect cabinet of faithful, valuable, and extensive information; and it ought to have a place on the shelves of the most select and compact library, and be in the possession of every private family, as a work both of valuable reference.

1844 August, “Notices of New Works: The Travels of Marco Polo, greatly Amended and Enlarged, from Valuable early Manuscripts recently published by the French Society of Geography, and [in] Italy, by Count Baldelli Boni […]. By Hugh Murray, F. R. S. E.”, in The Metropolitan, volume 40, London: Saunders and Otley, page 117

Holmes took a note of it. “One other question,” said he. “Was the photograph a cabinet?”

1891, Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal In Bohemia, Norton, published 2005, page 19

Lincoln had a great deal of trouble with his Cabinet because some of them got it into their heads that they, and not the President, were the policy-makers. James K. Polk had the same difficulty with his Cabinet. Franklin Roosevelt never had any difficulty with his Cabinet for the simple reason that he himself, in my opinion, spent too much time doing the work that should have been delegated to the Cabinet.

1955, Harry S Truman, Memoirs of Harry S. Truman: Year of Decisions‎, volume I, Signet Books, published 1965, page 364

Philip passed some hours every day in his father's cabinet.

1855–1858, William H[ickling] Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Boston, Mass.: Phillips, Sampson, and Company

One of Rhode Island's most famous beverages is the Awful Awful, an enormous 32-ounce, rich, creamy milk shake sold at the Newport Creamery stores, a soda fountain and casual restaurant chain. This ultra-thick cabinet is "awful big and awful good," thus the name.

2012, Linda Beaulieu, Providence & Rhode Island Cookbook: Big Recipes from the Smallest State, page 268

Hearken a while from thy green cabinet, / The rural song of careful Colinet.

1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], “December. Aegloga Duodecima.”, in The Shepheardes Calender: […], London: […] Hugh Singleton, […]; republished as The Shepheardes Calender […], London: […] Iohn Wolfe for Iohn Harrison the yonger, […], 1586,