à la carte
Americanadjective
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with a separate price for each dish offered on the menu.
dinner à la carte.
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with a separate price for each item on a list.
Spa treatments can be booked à la carte, or you can choose one of our packages.
adjective
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(of a menu or a section of a menu) having dishes listed separately and individually priced Compare table d'hôte
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(of a dish) offered on such a menu; not part of a set meal
Etymology
Origin of à la carte
First recorded in 1815–20; from French: literally, “according to the menu”; carte
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.
While Williams-Sonoma offers a number of complete Thanksgiving dinners for delivery—including one featuring a Cajun-style fried turkey, and another with a honey-glazed ham—the kitchenware and gourmet-food retailer also offers dozens of à la carte offerings.
The San Francisco company now offers a la carte shopping—a departure from its traditional, stylist-curated subscription-box service—and gives customers more options on the number of items that are in a box, as examples.
The NBA opted to have its games stream a la carte this season for the first time in the league’s history.
From MarketWatch
I believe that investors will pay considerably less for financial advisory services, and will use them a la carte to supplement AI investment strategies, rather than paying a straight percentage fee for assets under management.
Consultants are charging accordingly, with fees of more than $200 per hour for a la carte services or between $5,000 to $15,000 for someone to manage the entire application process.
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.