diner
Americannoun
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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
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.
Around the same time as Hassabis was working on “Theme Park,” Jensen Huang and two other men sat down in a Denny’s diner and drafted a plan for a 3-D graphics company.
From MarketWatch • May 23, 2026
Because these brands are throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, they often fail to account for how much value a disciplined diner can actually extract from these deals.
From MarketWatch • May 14, 2026
Since the building’s reopening in 2018, thousands of guests have ended the journey along Route 66 with a meal in the diner.
From Los Angeles Times • May 12, 2026
Since he never removes pages from his sketchbooks, some restaurant drawings in his sketchbooks were scanned, printed on thick paper and displayed on diner tables as “placemats.”
From Los Angeles Times • May 12, 2026
For food we just ate cheap at random taco shops with the money I had leftover in my pocket and the change Rondell gave back to me from when he was at the diner.
From "We Were Here" by Matt De La Peña
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.
