lunch counter

American  

noun

1. a counter, as in a store or restaurant, where light meals and snacks are served or are sold to be taken out.

2. a luncheonette.

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Etymology

Origin of lunch counter

First recorded in 1865–70

Example Sentences

After a quick pass of the lunch counter to grab a second salad, I made my way across the atrium to where Regan sat, her forehead scrunched in concentration as she read chapter two.

From Literature

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

Once, she told me that she wanted to participate in a sit-in at the lunch counter of the Woolworth’s, a retail department store chain, on Main Street in Hampton.

From Literature

Paschke sat at the packed lunch counter on a recent afternoon, waiting to pay.

From Los Angeles Times

James M. Lawson Jr., a Methodist minister who became the teacher of the civil rights movement, training hundreds of youthful protesters in nonviolent tactics that made the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins a model for fighting racial inequality in the 1960s, has died.

From Los Angeles Times