Stretcher (furniture) Stretcher (furniture) A stretcher is a horizontal support element of a table, chair or other item of furniture; this structure is normally made of exposed wood and ties vertical elements of the piece together. There are numerous styles of the stretcher including circumferential, double and spindle design. This term is sometimes referred to as a stretcher beam. A very common pattern for chairs has each front leg connected to the back by the lateral stretchers, which in turn are connected by a medial stretcher. In the William and Mary period chi (from the Greek letter chi - Χ) stretchers were
Functional item Functional item In the framework of Noam Chomsky's Minimalist Program, items of the lexicon are of two types: with or without substantive content. Items of the former category are called lexical items, whereas items of the latter category are functional items. Functional items carry the grammatical content of a sentence, which means that by taking them out of the sentence one would still understand the meaning, although it would not be grammatical. In other words, they are the 'glue' that holds the sentence together. Functional items can also be classified as closed class, that is, belonging to parts of speech