The Collaborative International Dictionary
Levee \Lev"ee\ (l[e^]v"[-e]; often l[e^]v*[=e]" in U. S.), n. [F. lever, fr. lever to raise, se lever to rise. See Lever, n.]
The act of rising. `` The sun's levee.''
--Gray.-
A morning assembly or reception of visitors, -- in distinction from a soir['e]e, or evening assembly; a matin['e]e; hence, also, any general or somewhat miscellaneous gathering of guests, whether in the daytime or evening; as, the president's levee.
Note: In England a ceremonious day reception, when attended by both ladies and gentlemen, is called a drawing-room.
Usage examples of "drawing-room".
The first thing which caught his eyes as he entered the drawing-room before dinner was Argemone listening in absorbed reverence to her favourite vicar,--a stern, prim, close-shaven, dyspeptic man, with a meek, cold smile, which might have become a cruel one.
Like James in the old days, Soames found time to go there nearly every Sunday, and sit in the little drawing-room into which, with his undoubted taste, he had introduced a good deal of change and china not quite up to his own fastidious mark, and at least two rather doubtful Barbizon pictures, at Christmastides.
I went up to dust the drawing-room, and while I was trying to get behind the chiffonnier it tilted.
She made him sit down with her in the cosiest corner of the drawing-room, gave him coffee and a cigarette, and promised that Claude would come in a moment.
THE RETICENCE OF LADY ANNE Egbert came into the large, dimly lit drawing-room with the air of a man who is not certain whether he is entering a dovecote or a bomb factory, and is prepared for either eventuality.
His grace himself, when Mark arrived there with Sowerby and Miss Dunstable--for in this instance Miss Dunstable did travel in the phaeton, while Mark occupied a seat in the dicky--his grace himself was at this moment in the drawing-room and nothing could exceed his urbanity.
CHAPTER XXIX MISS DUNSTABLE AT HOME Miss Dunstable did not look like a love-lorn maiden, as she stood in a small ante-chamber at the top of her drawing-room stairs, receiving her guests.
Miss Dunstable said to her, as she sat herself down to her desk in the drawing-room on the first morning after her arrival at Boxall Hill.
Having attained a mood of philosophic calm, in which he was prepared to spend his evenings alone -- as became a grub -- and to await with dignified patience the return of his wife, it was in the nature of an inconsistency that he should have walked the floor of the dull little drawing-room like a lion in cage.
So John Hammond hung about the luxurious drawing-room at Fellside in a manner which his friend Maulevrier ridiculed as unmanly.
It fell over the firedogs into the drawing-room and rolled on to the carpet, scattering great sparks around it.
Chapter 20 Z helped Janey carry the girl to a sofa in the drawing-room, Hadfield trailing anxiously behind.
The Heaths presently came upon her, looking very large and Roman, in the middle of the second drawing-room.
When at last, at dinner-time, he reappeared in the drawing-room, Miss Hofmann greeted him almost as an old friend.
He would sit in the drawing-room for an hour, pulling his whiskers and moustaches nervously, often glancing at Barbara, making the kindest inquiries concerning Madeline, for whom he actually brought flowers.