diner

plural diners

1. Someone who dines.

   When it comes to Chinese food I have always operated under the policy that the less known about the preparation the better. A wise diner who is invited to visit the kitchen replies by saying, as politely as possible, that he has a pressing engagement elsewhere.

   1983, Calvin Trillin, Third Helpings

   1 more example

   The most rapid and most seductive transition in all human nature is that which attends the palliation of a ravenous appetite.[…]Can those harmless but refined fellow-diners be the selfish cads whose gluttony and personal appearance so raised your contemptuous wrath on your arrival?

   1921, Ben Travers, chapter 5, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC

2. rareSomeone who gives a dinner.

   3 more examples

   In the noble science of gastronomy, likewise, he who can not afford to collect a cellar of wines, and accumulate the rarities of distant climes and seasons, will make but little progress, For, though the diner and the dinee, the host and the guest, have similar sources open to them, yet the most practised parasite can not attain to the same regular course of study, as the Amphitryon Millionaire.

   1821, “On Collecting”, in The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, volume I, Original Papers, number III, London: Henry Colburn and Co. […], →OCLC, page 361

   f I was broke, we’d just hang out at his place or my place looking at videos. This was very new and very different for me. Like I said, I’d been used to being wined and dined, you know, being the “dinee”. Is that a word? Anyway, now, I’m the “diner”. Does that make any sense? You know what I’m trying to say, right?

   2004, Will Jones, “Tina from New Mexico: Let Me Tell You ’bout This A**hole…”, in Let Me Tell You ’bout This…, Victoria, B.C.: Trafford Publishing, →ISBN, page 145

   The street outside was nearly empty, though it wouldn’t stay that way for long. The dinner crowds would be out soon, hawking their blood and other valuable living assets to the vitally challenged for tokens and textbooks and practical tips on how to pass Professor Boynya’s first alchemy exam. Both diners and dinees were waiting for the sun to slip behind the spindling brick façades of Pawn Row, but for now, Melee had the street to herself.

   2020, Elle Katharine White, “Matriculation”, in Jonathan Strahan, editor, The Book of Dragons: An Anthology, New York, N.Y.: Harper Voyager, →ISBN

3. A car in a railroad train that serves meals.

   The diner is everybody's kitchen.

   1979, Richard Gutman, American Diner

   1 more example

   Pacific No. 60123, H. A. Ivatt, a Leeds engine with 12 corridors, but no diners, went by, however.

   1951 January, R. A. H. Weight, “A Railway Recorder in Essex and Hertfordshire”, in Railway Magazine, page 46

   Synonyms: dining car, restaurant car

4. USA typically small restaurant, historically modeled after a railroad dining car, that serves lower-class fare, normally having a counter with stools along one side and booths on the other.

   Synonyms: pub, choke and puke, automat, beanery, buffet, cafeteria, caff, canteen

plural diners

1. A commemorative currency of Andorra, not legal tender, divided into 100 centims.