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waiter

UK/ˈweɪ̯təː/
nounA2+Very common — you will meet it every day · #2,059 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: waiters

A waiter is the person who takes your order and brings your food in a restaurant. Black apron, a pad in one hand, topping up the water without being asked, appearing the moment you look up for the bill.

A woman doing the job is a waitress, though plenty of restaurants now use waiter for everyone, and server is the standard word in America. Together they are the waiting staff, and the verb is to wait: he waits tables, she waited on us all evening. The old sense of attending on somebody survives in dumbwaiter, the little lift that carries plates between floors. One practical point: nobody calls 'Waiter!' across a dining room any more — you catch their eye and say excuse me.

Lars Jacob · Public domain

Definitions of waiter

  1. 1nounwaiterA person whose job is bringing food and drink to customers at their table.A2+

    “The waiter brought the wrong soup and apologised twice.”

    • Said"Wave at the waiter, would you? We've been here twenty minutes."
    • WrittenThe waiters moved between the tables like men who had somewhere better to be.
    • UsedTip the waiter in cash if the bill already adds a service charge you cannot see.
    • ContrastA waiter, not a cook. The cook makes the food; the waiter brings it to you and takes the plates away. cook →
    • Not thisThe person behind the counter at a cafe is not a waiter. A waiter comes to your table.
    • Exchange"Shall we ask the waiter?""He's coming. Look hungry."

    Patterncall / signal the waiter · a head waiter · waiter service · wait on tables · waitress

    synonyms: server, waitress

waiter is a member of restaurant staff.

Also accepted in games: waitress, server

Remember it

WAITer → 'WAITer, WATer please!'

'Waiter! Water, please!' — and he is back in a moment with a full glass, a towel over his arm.

Where it comes from

In Middle English a waiter was a watchman or an attendant, from wait in its old sense of watching and standing by. The restaurant meaning grew out of household service in the late 1400s and only reached inns and eating houses in the 1660s. Waitress is far younger: it is first written down in 1834.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *weǵ-

  2. Middle English

    waiter

  3. English, today

    waiter

Built from

  • wayter · Middle English — attendant, watchman

From late 14th century Middle English waiter, wayter (“attendant, watchman”). by surface analysis, wait + -er. Sense of "servant who waits at tables" is from late 15th century, originally in reference to household servants; in reference to inns, eating houses, etc., it is attested from 1660s. Feminine form waitress first recorded 1834. The London Stock Exchange sense harks back to the early days of trading in coffee-shops.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen, Work & Careers, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 14 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

waiter in the wild

  • In British English, the terms commis waiter, commis boy, and waiter's assistant are more common.

    Busser

  • At the time of the murders, he was a hotel waiter, and on parole for a 1989 robbery.

    Maury Travis

  • Philemon Thomas Herbert was an American politician best known for killing a waiter who refused to serve him breakfast.

    Philemon T. Herbert

  • Elijah John Carey was a New Zealand waiter, trade unionist and soldier.

    Elijah Carey

  • During his teenage years, he worked as a binman, waiter and hod carrier.

    Neville Southall

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • wait