caters

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of cater.

   The firm caters corporate events for hundreds of attendees.

   Good management caters to the needs of every employee.

   Note

   The everyday verb form: the firm caters, she caters to every whim. When it means providing food, it can take a direct object (caters weddings) or stand alone (who caters?). In the figurative senses it is intransitive and needs a preposition, as in caters to a crowd, and that phrase often carries a hint of pandering. The same spelling is also the plural noun, so the context decides which one is meant.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of cater.

   Note

   A plural found mostly in older writing, because nearly every meaning of the singular has died out. Beside a dice throw or a hand of cards it means fours. Beside a great household it means the officers who bought provisions for the steward. The one living use is the bell-ringers' term, which is always plural.

3. 3
   nounplural

   A series of changes rung on nine bells in the English style of change-ringing.

   The bellringers attempted a full peal of caters on the tower's nine bells.

   Caters require nine bells and a tightly coordinated band of ringers.

   Note

   A change-ringer's word, used only in the plural and normally preceded by the method it belongs to, as in a quarter peal of plain bob caters. Treat it as the name of a class: a band rings caters, never a cater. It belongs to the vocabulary of towers and peals, alongside the other technical terms of campanology, and is rarely heard outside it.

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