Dinner
nounThe main meal of the day, usually eaten in the evening.
How to spell dinner
6 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce dinner
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does dinner mean?
- nounThe main meal of the day, usually eaten in the evening.
Dinner in a sentence
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The family sat down to dinner at seven o'clock.
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She booked a table for dinner at the new restaurant.
Where does dinner come from?
Language of origin: French
Dinner comes from the Old French word disner, which as a verb meant 'to dine' and as a noun meant the chief meal of the day. That French word is thought to trace back to a Late Latin form, disjejunare, meaning literally 'to break the fast', built from the prefix dis- (undo or reverse) and jejunium (a fast or fasting). In the medieval period this main meal was usually eaten in the middle of the day, which is why older English texts use 'dinner' for the noon meal. English borrowed the word in the 1200s and the spelling settled with a doubled n. The same disjejunare root also gave us 'dine' and is a cousin of the breakfast word, since both ultimately describe breaking a fast.
How the word is built
- din- (from Old French disner: to dine)
- -ner (noun ending)
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