cater
Noun pluralcaters
Formscaters, catering, catered
Pluralcaters
- 1To supply food for others, especially as a paid professional service at a special event.
The restaurant will cater the conference, supplying lunch for three hundred attendees.
She catered weddings for a decade before opening her own bistro.
Note
Both constructions are current. A company caters a wedding, or it caters for a bat mitzvah, with the event either as the direct object or after for. The professional, paid-service meaning is the modern narrowing. Shakespeare's As You Like It uses the verb for providence itself, which "caters for the Sparrow" and feeds the birds without contract or fee.
- 2To shape or adjust something to suit an intended audience.
Streaming services cater to niche audiences with highly specific programming.
The museum's new exhibit caters to families with young children rather than to specialists.
Note
Here the object is a clientele rather than a craving, and the construction is with for. A business caters for young professionals; a hotel caters for a cheaper class of patron. It turns easily into the passive, with the audience as subject: drinkers "were catered for" by liquor stores. That passive is rare with the pandering use.
- 3To provide anything required or desired; often disapproving, suggesting pandering to someone's whims.
The resort caters to wealthy travelers who expect every comfort.
Critics complained that the network would cater to its advertisers at the expense of honest reporting.
Similarpander, indulge, pamper, gratify
Note
The disapproving edge comes with to: one caters to a whim, a taste, a vanity. Thackeray in 1840 complained of art "catering to the national taste and vanity." The object is usually an appetite rather than a need, and that is what tips the verb toward pandering. The audience-tailoring sense takes for and carries no blame.
- 4To provide or supply something.
Frontier outfitters catered to every need of the wagon trains, from flour to fresh axles.
Modern campgrounds cater to travelers with showers, power hookups, and small stores.
Note
The verb began as a job title: Middle English catour, a provisioner, clipped from acatour, which goes back to Old French acater, "to buy." To cater was first to do what the household's buyer did. Its constructions have shifted. Thomas Randolph could write that a curse "caters a dish," but today the verb usually takes to or for: catering to a complex, catering for large gatherings.
- 5Diagonally; moving or placed in a slanting line from corner to corner rather than straight across.
The old footpath cuts cater across the pasture toward the creek.
The fence runs cater over the hillside, following the old property line.
Similardiagonally, obliquely, crosswise, slantwise
Note
The adverb shares its disputed origin with the dialect verb and pairs with the compound cater-cornered. Sebastian Evans's Leicestershire Words (1881) records it in cloth-working: to "cut cater" velvet or cloth is to cut it on the cross, and cater-snozzle meant to make a mitre. Since it is regional on both sides of the Atlantic, it sits best in rural or dialect writing.
- 6To place, set, move, or cut something diagonally or at a slant.
The joiner catered the brace between the two posts.
Hill farmers there cater their drainage channels across the slope of the field.
Note
A separate word from the provisioning verb, and its origin is disputed. It probably goes back to French quatre, "four," perhaps by way of the bell-ringing term. Liberman instead derives it from a North Germanic prefix meaning "crooked, angled," which he also finds in cater-cousin. Barnaby Googe's 1577 translation of Heresbach uses it for orchard trees set checkerwise, "catred" so they line up from any angle.
- 7A method of ringing nine bells, with the bells moving in four pairs alongside a ninth tenor bell.
Saturday's quarter peal of cater lasted about forty-five minutes.
The tower captain called the changes as the band rang caters for the wedding.
Note
Change ringers use it as the name for ringing on nine bells, often in the plural. Henry Ellacombe in 1872 lists caters and cinques among terms "enough to frighten an amateur." George Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1878) thought it should be spelled quaters, since four couples of bells change places. The idea is the old word for four put to work in the belfry.
- 8A provider of food; a caterer.
Every guild feast required a cater to furnish the meat and ale.
The town's caters competed to supply the mayor's banquet.
Similarcaterer
Note
A broader, now obsolete use in which anyone or anything that supplies food is a cater. The modern word for the trade is caterer. John Lydgate's Fall of Princes already bends it toward figure: "Of his diete catour was scarsite," meaning that scarcity itself was what fed him.
- 9An officer who purchased food supplies for the steward of a large household or estate.
The earl's cater haggled with the fishmongers on behalf of the steward.
I am oure Catour and bere oure Alther purse.
c. 1400, Gamelyn, ll. 321 ff.Similaracater
Note
The household office behind the whole family of words, built like baker: cate, a provision, plus -er. The cater held the money. In the medieval romance Gamelyn a character boasts, "I am oure Catour and bere oure Alther purse." A Canterbury hospital's account book of 1512 records calves bought from "þe cater of Crystis Cherche." Acater names the same officer.
- 10A provider or purveyor of anything.
The old bookseller styled himself a cater of wisdom to the town.
The eye is loues Cator.
1590, Robert Greene, Greenes Mourning GarmentSimilarpurveyor
Note
The food-supplier's title stretched to supplying anything at all, where a modern writer would say purveyor. Robert Greene's Mourning Garment (1590) gives the classic turn: "The eye is loues Cator," since what the eye takes in is what love feeds on. The use is obsolete and belongs only in historical or deliberately archaic writing.
- 11The four of playing cards or of dice.
He wagered everything on throwing a cater, and the dice fell his way.
Cater is a very good caste.
1519, William Horman, VulgariaNote
The numeral at home among gamblers, where the French-derived name for four survived longest. William Horman's Vulgaria (1519) offers a schoolroom sentence: "Cater is a very good caste," where a cast is a throw of the dice. The word now belongs to historical writing about cards and dice rather than to the gaming table.
- 12Four, as a number.
The tally stick bore a cater of notches for the four loads delivered.
The auditour... cometh in with sise sould, and cater denere, for vi.s. and iiii.d.
1553, Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique...Note
A borrowing of French quatre, and a doublet of cuatro, that never settled into everyday English counting. Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique (1553) pairs it with sise in a French-flavored reckoning of money: "sise sould, and cater denere," six shillings and four pence. Apart from the four of cards or dice, the bare numeral is rare and long obsolete, so it belongs in historical reading, not in modern use.
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Origins
From Middle English catour ('provisioner'), a shortened form of acatour, from Old French acater ('to buy, to purchase'). It is equivalent to cate plus the suffix -er.
Probably ultimately from French quatre ('four'), possibly via cater ('change-ringing'). However, Liberman argues instead for a North Germanic prefix meaning 'crooked, angled, clumsy', from which he also derives cater-cousin and, via Norse, Old Irish cittach ('left-handed, awkward'); he finds this more likely than an extension of the dice and change-ringing term. Caterpillar and caterwaul are unrelated, deriving from cognates to cat, though they may have influenced the pronunciation.
From French quatre ('four'). It is a doublet of cuatro.