A what-not is a piece of furniture

Furniture

Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things...

 derived from the French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 étagère

Etagere

An étagère is a piece of light furniture very similar to the English what-not, which was extensively made in France during the latter part of the 18th century. It consists of a series of stages or shelves for the reception of ornaments or other small articles...

, which was exceedingly popular in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 in the first three-quarters of the 19th century. It usually consists of slender uprights or pillars, supporting a series of shelves for holding china, ornaments, trifles, or what not, hence the elusive name. In its English form, although a convenient piece of drawing room

Drawing room

A drawing room is a room in a house where visitors may be entertained. The name is derived from the sixteenth-century terms "withdrawing room" and "withdrawing chamber", which remained in use through the seventeenth century, and made its first written appearance in 1642...

 furniture, it was rarely beautiful. The early mahogany

Mahogany

The name mahogany is used when referring to numerous varieties of dark-colored hardwood. It is a native American word originally used for the wood of the species Swietenia mahagoni, known as West Indian or Cuban mahogany....

 examples are, however, sometimes graceful in their simplicity.

What-not is also an English term used to incorporate any other details not mentioned. This term is used much like et cetera

Et cetera

Et cetera is a Latin expression that means "and other things", or "and so forth". It is taken directly from the Latin expression which literally means "and the rest " and is a loan-translation of the Greek "καὶ τὰ ἕτερα"...

 to supplement details.

Popular culture

In By the Shores of Silver Lake

By the Shores of Silver Lake

By the Shores of Silver Lake, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, was first published in 1939 and is the fifth of nine books written in her Little House on the Prairie series, also known as "The Laura Years." The book begins when Laura is twelve years old and the family moves to what will become De Smet,...

 by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder was an American author who wrote the Little House series of books based on her childhood in a pioneer family...

, Mrs Boast shows the Ingalls family how to make a whatnot. Pa Ingalls built five shelves, which were set into a corner and the girls decorated it with scalloped and folded pasteboard curtains. Once it was finished, the whole thing paper and all, was painted brown to look like a solid piece of furniture.