eatery
Americannoun
-
eateries
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of eatery
Explanation
Use the word eatery when you're talking about a cafe or restaurant. You might stop at a great local eatery for a burger after seeing a movie. Eatery is a casual or informal word for a place to buy and eat prepared food. A diner is one kind of eatery, and a Chinese restaurant is another. You might have a favorite eatery among all the choices on a college campus, or know of an all-night eatery where you can get a snack at three a.m. Eatery was first used right around 1901, from eat, with its Old English root of etan, "to eat, devour, or consume."
Vocabulary lists containing eatery
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:
After opening her third eatery in January, she finally brought her 14-year-old daughter from Nepal following a decade of separation and she is now enrolled in a Japanese school.
From Barron's ● Jul. 1, 2026
Messrs. White and Moss-Bachrach and Ms. Edebiri have been the main ingredients over the course of “The Bear,” which refers to both Mr. White’s character and his eatery.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026
The complex was best known as the longtime home of the beloved Italian eatery Casa Nostra Ristorante, which closed a week before the Jan. 7, 2025, Palisades Fire and never reopened.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 13, 2026
Flo’s V8 Cafe isn’t a direct match with any Route 66 eatery, the Imagineers say, but was certainly influenced in spirit by the Midpoint Cafe in Adrian, Texas.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2026
"The newly decorated restaurant, Hoo's On First, the eatery of athletes, will hold its grand reopening on Sunday. Specialty of the day: fruited sea bass on purple waves."
From "The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin
The Michelin Guide awards up to three stars to eateries based on ingredient quality, flavour mastery, cooking technique, chef's personality and consistency.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026
People were swarming vendors from eateries all around Koreatown, dance circles formed around speakers blasting banda music, and “oohs” and “ahhs” at every missed shot were in perfect sync.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2026
He has been surprised to see it on the menu not only at Western-style eateries but also more casual Chinese establishments.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 13, 2026
And while business manager visa holders have a three-year grace period to meet the new conditions, some thriving businesses -- including many popular eateries in Okubo -- fear they won't manage.
From Barron's ● Jul. 1, 2026
There was a heat unlike anything I’d ever felt, a heat from the great buildings, compounded by the millions of people jamming themselves into subway cars, into bars, into those same tiny eateries and cafes.
From "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates
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.
