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
Manuguid also came to the lunch counter for the first time in 2010.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 7, 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
In February of that year, Black students staged a sit-in in the white-only section of a Woolworth’s lunch counter in North Carolina.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 26, 2022
Later, as I sat at the lunch counter in the five-and- dime to have a root beer, I could hardly eat for keeping watch all around me.
From "Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High" 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.
