Definition of "banquette" [ban•quette]

• A platform lining a trench or parapet wall on which soldiers may stand when firing. (noun)
• Southern Louisiana & East Texas A raised sidewalk: "The flower of loafers . . . was found stretched on the banquette on Tuesday night” ( New Orleans Daily Picayune). See Regional Note at beignet. (noun)
• A long upholstered bench placed against or built into a wall. (noun)
• A ledge or shelf, as on a buffet. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "_banquette_ on a fine summer's day is one of the most enjoyable places in life; it is cheap, and certainly not too rapid (five or six miles an hour being the average); and we can sit almost as comfortably in a corner of the banquette as in an easy-chair."
• "It is, when all is said and done, on the gallery that this city lives most of its life -- on the gallery even more than on the evening-thronged banquette, which is the sidewalk of the North, or the boulevards, or even the fragrant parks, where life flows in a fair, placid stream."
• "The compartment immediately beneath the banquette, which is the front compartment of the body of the coach, is called the _coupé_."