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40d:Container
Containers are, typically enough, boxes (or barrels, or bins, or even bags) made out of a solid material and are used to hold everything from personal possessions, to gems, to beer, to quarry bush leaves [25], and even living creatures. Their use is context-sensitive, so you cannot use your barrels for storing coins.
Barrels, bins and bags
Barrels are (usually) wooden containers that are useful for storing items in a food stockpile and are used primarily for flammable, unstable and volatile liquids, 2nd-stage cooking items (read: dwarven syryp and quarry bush leaves), unlucky stacks of =longland beer biscuits[8]=, and so on. They are also found to have been used for seed disposal, with some barrels being occupied by bags filled with plump helmet spawn, rock nuts and so on.
Bins are, esentially, smaller barrels (although these can be made of metal) for everything that doesn't want barrels. They are sent to all the other stockpiles (with exclusion to the refuse and graveyard piles) and will hold much larger stacks of items, making organising those endless piles of +giant cave spider silk cloth+ much more easier to manage.
Bags are some of the most widely-used containers in dwarf fortress, due to their use as both seed preservation and sand collection. These are only made from plant fiber or animal (silk) cloth, leather, or adamantine. These are also the only stockpile containers that can be used as a stationary container, if you want one for that sort of thing.
Cabinets and coffers
These two containers are both furniture items in your fortress, and are useful if you don't want your fortress drowning in dumped items. These are only used as containers after you build them under shelter. As long as a nearby bed/table/chair/armour rack/etc has been query - room - assigned to a dwarf, they will store their clothing items in the cabinet and all the other items (including coins) into the coffer.
A wooden coffer is called a chest, and a glass coffer is called a box, but they are used for the same purpose.