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
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:
Business was winding down for the day at Sendan Shokudo, a diner in Japan's southwestern city of Yatsushiro, when the whole building suddenly lurched.
From BBC ● Jul. 29, 2026
"Wimbledon just has this magic, and so much of that comes from the traditions you look forward to every single year," one diner told the newspaper, external.
From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2026
KETTERING, England—There was a time when the wooden-framed diner off the A14 highway here served up British comfort food to families traveling up from London.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026
To build it they flipped the longtime Silver Spoon diner into their modern seafood shack, alongside their business partners Donato Poto, Amy Specter Nickoloff and Craig Nickoloff.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 23, 2026
I hoped Pa would treat us all to a late breakfast at the diner, but we went straight home.
From "P.S. Be Eleven" by Rita Williams-Garcia
Saunders also noted that Cracker Barrel is still not exactly a destination for diners outside of its most loyal customers.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 28, 2026
Plans to simplify the classic logo and modernise store interiors sparked fierce resistance from loyal diners who argued the changes stripped away the brand's nostalgic Southern charm.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
On a Tuesday night in May, prospective diners were told it would be about an hour’s wait to eat at the Wynn buffet, which starts at $80 per person for dinner.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026
For 50 years, diners in Los Feliz knew they could count on a warm welcome and a hearty meal from Tony Fanara.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026
Other diners seem to be looking in our direction.
From "Blended" by Sharon M. Draper
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.
