dinner dress

American  

noun

1. a dress, often long and having sleeves or a jacket, more elaborate than one designed for daytime wear but less formal than an evening gown.

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Etymology

Origin of dinner dress

First recorded in 1805–15

Example Sentences

Cameron: There are always moments that are difficult or more challenging, and the dinner dress was difficult to work out.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 24, 2022

Then you’d put on an afternoon dress, then your dinner dress, and if you were going out you’d put on an evening dress, and then when you got home you’d put on your gown.

From Slate • Jan. 25, 2012

I don’t even know what to call the strange pink tulle appendage that overlays her dinner dress in Act II.

From New York Times • Jun. 18, 2011

She had seafood dinners, saw Oklahoma!, shopped for a dinner dress, but found only impossible size 16s.

From Time Magazine Archive

We cowered as she searched through the hangers for her dinner dress.

From "Secrets at Sea" by Richard Peck