TV dinner

American  

noun

1. a quick-frozen meal, typically consisting of meat, potato, and a vegetable, packaged in a tray for heating before serving.

---

Etymology

Origin of TV dinner

First recorded in 1950–55

Example Sentences

If you want to wear rainbow chard, a sardine tin, or a TV dinner in your hair, Lennick has a clip for that, though the company's bestseller is a strawberry.

From BBC • Apr. 22, 2026

But your homemade meals don’t have to resemble a frozen TV dinner, with its segmented tray of meat, an amorphous sauce, a scoop of peas or rice and a mysterious, saccharine lump of... jello?

From Salon • Mar. 30, 2025

Some may consider Stouffer’s a metonym for TV dinner.

From New York Times • Nov. 4, 2021

I spent middle school as a latchkey kid, riding two public buses to get home and once there, often ended up spending evenings alone and warming up a frozen TV dinner.

From Washington Post • Sep. 1, 2021

“I could kill for a TV dinner right now. I really could.”

From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson