Banquet

How to spell banquet

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce banquet

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does banquet mean?

1. nounA large, formal, ceremonial meal for many guests, often marking a special occasion.

Banquet in a sentence

• The company hosted a banquet to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary.

• Guests in evening dress filed into the hotel banquet hall.

Where does banquet come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arrived in English in the late 1400s from French banquet, which began life as a diminutive of banc, meaning 'bench'. The earlier sense was modest: a little snack or light meal eaten while perched on a bench, rather than the lavish feast we picture today. The French in turn took the idea from the Italian banchetto, a small banco or 'table/bench', so the whole family traces back to the same Germanic root that gives us the everyday word 'bench' and the financial 'bank' (originally a money-changer's bench). Over time the meaning inflated from a casual bite into a grand, formal feast, while the spelling kept its French shape. That French inheritance is exactly why the trap sits in the middle: the 'qu' spells the 'kw' sound and the unstressed final vowel is easy to misjudge.

How the word is built

• banc- (bench, from which a small meal eaten on a bench took its name)
• -et (diminutive suffix)