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
French food isn’t about to be knocked from its perch: The No. 1 lunch counter is still the local bakery.
From New York 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
Some fifty NCC students, joined by four white students from Duke, walked into the Woolworth’s store on Main Street and filled up the seats at the lunch counter.
From "The Best of Enemies" by Osha Gray Davidson
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.
