noun
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a less common word for pub
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a place licensed for the sale and consumption of alcoholic drink
Synonym Usage
See hotel.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of tavern
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English taverne, from Old French, from Latin taberna “hut, inn, wine shop”
Explanation
A tavern is a pub or a bar, often one that rents upstairs rooms to travelers. The word tavern is most popular in the New England region of the United States, where many taverns date back as far as the 1600s and 1700s. A tavern is a drinking establishment that rents rooms — in England, it's much more common to call such a place an inn. The earliest, thirteenth century meaning of tavern was "wine shop," and by the 1400s it meant "public house or inn." The root word is the Latin taberna, "hut, shop, or inn."
Vocabulary lists containing tavern
Content Summary 5.1: Causes of the Atlantic Revolutions
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocabulary for February 18–February 24, 2023
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Elijah of Buxton
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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:
Back at the tavern, the men's meeting is wrapping up.
From BBC ● Oct. 2, 2026
Instead they meet in person, in the room above a Village tavern, for urgent discussions about issues that inflame the young, creative mind.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 6, 2026
Holding a glass jug, Jorge Velazco Rocha crouches before a contraption of wooden barrels stacked in cascading fashion at his roadside tavern along the scrubby flanks of the Volcán de Colima.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 24, 2026
She said of tertulias, the literary debates that took over an evening in a home or tavern, “they certainly ate, but above all, they drank and debated passionately.”
From Salon ● Jun. 23, 2026
We ducked into the barn and stared at the tavern.
From "My Brother Sam is Dead" by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
Hospitality veteran Clemens Keller insists that Vienna's storied "heuriger" winemakers' taverns -- which face a hangover-inducing brew of real estate speculation, spiralling costs and climate change -- cannot rely on their illustrious past.
From Barron's ● Jul. 26, 2026
"It's coming to a point now where we are going to lose some of our inns and taverns, never to be returned," he told the BBC.
From BBC ● Jul. 25, 2026
The printers, the bookshops, the guesthouses and taverns, they followed.
From Salon ● Jun. 23, 2026
His Uncle Frank telling jokes from behind the bar in one of these taverns first piqued Dreesen’s interest in comedy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 18, 2026
My memories of that year were a revolving world of dark alleyways and breezy rooftops, dingy taverns and dance halls.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
