lunch counter
Americannoun
-
a counter, as in a store or restaurant, where light meals and snacks are served or are sold to be taken out.
-
a luncheonette.
Etymology
Origin of lunch counter
First recorded in 1865–70
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.
When he got in, he worked in his brother’s restaurants—a lunch counter, then a pizzeria—to pay his tuition.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 20, 2026
He showed the students how to run an orderly sit-in by filling lunch counter seats in shifts.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 10, 2024
As a teenager, she had once thrown the “Colored” sign off a city bus, and she had already spent a night in jail in Nashville for participating in a lunch counter sit-in.
From New York Times ● Jul. 21, 2023
As a youth, he organized a lunch counter sit-in to protest segregation in his hometown of Wichita, Kansas.
From Washington Times ● Apr. 5, 2023
When first I saw the five-and-dime’s lunch counter as a little girl, I was in awe.
From "March Forward, Girl" by Melba Pattillo Beals
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.
