Other forms: reservations
A reservation is a table, a room or a seat kept for you until you turn up. You ring the restaurant on Tuesday for Saturday at eight, give your name at the door, and the reservation is the reason there is a table waiting.
Book is the verb and reservation is what you end up holding; Americans make a reservation where the British are as likely to say booking. It also names a doubt you are holding back — I have reservations about the plan means you are uneasy without refusing outright. The opposite is a fixed phrase: without reservation means completely, with nothing kept back. In the United States a reservation is also land set aside for a Native American nation. And in a contract, a reservation is a right the seller keeps for himself when he hands the thing over.
1nounreservationAn arrangement that keeps a table, room or seat for someone.
“We have a reservation for four at half past seven.”
Patternmake / have / cancel a reservation · a reservation for + number · under the name of · booking
2nounmisgivingA doubt that stops you agreeing completely.
“She signed the contract, but with serious reservations.”
3nounareaAn area of land set aside for a Native American nation.
“He grew up on a reservation in South Dakota.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
reservation is an arrangement made in advance.
RESERVation → a table held in RESERVE
You phone the restaurant and they keep a table in reserve for you, with your name on it.
Reservation came in from Middle French reservation, and it is reserve with -ation on the end — the noun for the act of reserving. Whatever the object is, a table, a plot of land or a doubt, something is being held back for later.
Middle French
reservation
English, today
reservation
From Middle French reservation, equivalent to reserve + -ation.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA