diner
Americannoun
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diners
plural
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a person who dines.
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a railroad dining car.
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a restaurant built like such a car.
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a small, informal, and usually inexpensive restaurant.
noun
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a person eating a meal, esp in a restaurant
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a small restaurant, often at the roadside
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a fashionable bar, or a section of one, where food is served
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of diner
Explanation
A diner is a person who's eating a meal, and it's also a word for a casual restaurant. If you pass by a diner in a diner, check out what's on his plate. It could be anything from eggs over easy to salisbury steak. If you dine in a cafe you're a diner, and if you eat in the dining car on a train, you can call it a diner too. Your favorite neighborhood diner — a casual restaurant that keeps late hours and serves a variety of food — is actually named after these railroad restaurants. The original diners, from the 1930s, were shaped like train cars, often clad in stainless steel, and had long, narrow space inside with stools along a counter.
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.
See Examples For:
That small decision — chips or no chips — moves the diner almost imperceptibly from guest to customer.
From Salon ● Oct. 7, 2026
Shelton isn’t a corned beef sandwich at an all-night diner.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026
A restaurant has always been an experience, but today’s chefs have more opportunities to shape that experience before a diner ever walks through the door.
From Salon ● Sep. 1, 2026
He reflected on how emotional it was to see the family leave the diner behind.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2026
He and Mom and Jess had come up here whenever they could sneak away from the little diner they owned in Cedar.
From "I Survived the Eruption of Mount St. Helens, 1980" by Lauren Tarshis
Anula took us to Tjöruhúsið, a local restaurant that attracts diners from across the country.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026
“We want to make sure that’s more transparent,” which means diners get a protein, two bases and four toppings for around $13, with dressing and bread included, she said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2026
In fact, 37% of surveyed diners said they were going out to eat less often than they did the year before, with most citing higher prices as their main reason for staying in.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 13, 2026
Once diners begin treating evidence of human effort as part of the product, efficiency itself can start looking suspicious.
From Salon ● Oct. 3, 2026
Other diners seem to be looking in our direction.
From "Blended" by Sharon M. Draper
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
