cabaret
Americannoun
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a restaurant providing food, drink, music, a dance floor, and often a floor show.
-
a caf é that serves food and drink and offers entertainment often of an improvisatory, satirical, and topical nature.
- Synonyms:
- club, supper club, nightclub
-
a floor show consisting of such entertainment.
The cover charge includes dinner and a cabaret.
-
a form of theatrical entertainment, consisting mainly of political satire in the form of skits, songs, and improvisations.
an actress whose credits include cabaret, TV, and dinner theater.
-
a decoratively painted porcelain coffee or tea service with tray, produced especially in the 18th century.
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Archaic. a shop selling wines and liquors.
verb (used without object)
noun
-
a floor show of dancing, singing, or other light entertainment at a nightclub or restaurant
-
a nightclub or restaurant providing such entertainment
Etymology
Origin of cabaret
1625–35; < French: tap-room, Middle French dial. ( Picard or Walloon) < Middle Dutch, denasalized variant of cambret, cameret < Picard camberete small room (cognate with French chambrette; chamber, -ette )
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
What she presents is more like the world’s campiest cabaret act, with the Bride as a mashup of Katharine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis and maybe Natasha Lyonne.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 5, 2026
The “Firework” hitmaker and Trudeau confirmed their relationship in October, when they stepped out hand in hand at a cabaret show in Paris.
From MarketWatch • Feb. 23, 2026
One of her original creations, the faded cabaret queen Lola Heatherton, armored herself in plastered-on wigs and stage finery, façades obscuring the jittery desperation of a woman hanging on by the quicks of her fingernails.
From Salon • Feb. 4, 2026
The plan for an improvisational, conversational, easy, breezy holiday cabaret lasted about two weeks before morphing into what Jinkx describes as a “two-act variety show, musicale, theatrical spectacular.”
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 25, 2025
When I reached the cabaret, I passed the note to the doorman.
From "The Boy on the Wooden Box" by Leon Leyson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
