restaurant
Americannoun
-
restaurants
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of restaurant
An Americanism first recorded in 1820–30; from French, noun use of present participle of restaurer, from Latin restaurāre “to restore, reestablish”; cf. re- ( def. ), store
Compare meaning
How does restaurant compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
A restaurant is a place — usually inside a building — where you go to eat food, which, most of the time, you must pay for. Restaurant comes from the French restaurer, which means "to provide food for." Restaurants will provide food for you if you've got the cash, and most of the time they'll even let you sit down right there and eat it. Common examples of restaurants include burger joints, cafeterias, pizzerias, sandwich shops, steak houses, seafood shacks, (some) hot-dog stands, ice cream parlors, taquerias, Chinese takeout, (some) bakeries, and fine-dining establishments.
Vocabulary lists containing restaurant
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:
"A shop, a petrol station, a restaurant - everywhere you can imagine - you'll see a man that's done something," one survivor, Sarah, tells BBC Panorama.
From BBC ● Sep. 21, 2026
But it might also be dinner for an exhausted parent who wants twenty minutes back and misses what the inside of a restaurant tastes like.
From Salon ● Sep. 20, 2026
In 2000, the year before 9/11, Windows on the World—the glamorous dining establishment in the North Tower of the World Trade Center—was the highest-grossing restaurant in the U.S.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026
Though many items are favorites of the founders, the restaurant, Cardoso said, was built for everyone.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2026
She smelled like the restaurant, but Michael didn’t mind.
From "The First State of Being" by Erin Entrada Kelly
She’s always been generous — maybe too generous — considerably better off than I am, and she regularly takes me out to expensive restaurants.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 21, 2026
But when cooking at home, its chef-owner, Kwame Onwuachi, who also runs restaurants in Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas, takes a more laid-back approach.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 20, 2026
Read our article on why some US restaurants are banning tips.
From BBC ● Sep. 18, 2026
When at the Treasury, he reported holding a stake in Global Restaurant Management LLC, the parent company of a firm that operated multiple Papa Johns restaurants in Russia at the time.
From Salon ● Sep. 16, 2026
The Crêperie is one of my favorite restaurants, but we haven’t been there in a while—not since before my parents had to put our house up for sale.
From "A Soft Place to Land" by Janae Marks
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.
