waiter
Pluralwaiters
Verbwaiters, waitering, waitered
Pluralwaiters
Formswaiters, waitering, waitered
- 1A person employed to serve food and drinks to customers at their tables in a restaurant, café, or similar place.
The waiter recommended the grilled fish and a local white wine.
Two waiters carried the heavy trays across the crowded dining room.
Similarserver, waitperson
Note
The table-serving meaning is younger than the word. It grew out of an older word for an attendant and the obsolete 'watchman' sense. It appears in the late 15th century, first for household servants, and reaches inns and eating houses only in the 1660s. Today it covers men and women alike, and it works as a direct call across a room: "Waiter! There's a fly in my soup."
- 2A person who waits for someone or something, or who is in a state of waiting.
As a lifelong waiter for trains that never ran on time, he always carried a book.
The waiters in the lobby glanced at the clock every few minutes.
Note
Here the word is at its most transparent: wait plus -er, simply one who waits. It is at home in policy writing about queues. OECD Health Policy Studies (2013) speaks of "the longest waiters," meaning patients who have waited longest for treatment. Because the restaurant meaning is so familiar, make the waiting explicit with a phrase like "for treatment" or "on the list," or readers will picture trays.
- 3To work as a server in a restaurant, attending to customers at their tables.
They waiter at the same bistro every weekend during the season.
She waitered through her twenties before opening her own restaurant.
Similarserve
Note
A noun turned verb that takes regular endings: waiters, waitering, waitered. It sits naturally beside other restaurant-trade verbs, as in James Kenneth Melson's "nor bussed, nor waitered," and it takes the workplace with at: "he waitered at the Spain." No object follows it, because the work itself is the meaning.
- 4An attendant employed at the London Stock Exchange to carry messages and assist its members.
A waiter crossed the floor to deliver the latest prices to the clerk.
The exchange's waiters wore distinctive coats as they moved among the members.
Note
A title tied to one institution: the attendants on the London Stock Exchange were called waiters. The title keeps the word's early meaning of "attendant" rather than a server of food. It belongs to the exchange's past, so use it in historical writing and name the setting clearly. Otherwise a reader will picture the restaurant server crossing the trading floor.
Less common meanings
- 5A tray or vessel on which dishes and other items are carried; a salver.
A footman entered bearing a waiter laden with glasses.
She placed the letter on a small waiter beside the tea things.
Note
A thing rather than a person: the tray that does the carrying. Dickens could still write of "waiters full of glasses" in Nicholas Nickleby (1839), and that phrase is exactly where a modern reader stumbles, because it suggests a crowd of staff. The sense is obsolete on its own but survives inside dumbwaiter, where the waiter is again a piece of equipment.
- 6A customs officer stationed at a port to inspect arriving goods; a tide waiter.
A waiter examined the manifest as the merchant ship docked at the quay.
The customs waiters recorded every barrel brought ashore that morning.
Note
Customs had its own waiters: officers of the custom house, known in full as tide waiters. The bare form is obsolete. In older texts, a waiter mentioned alongside a port, a cargo or the custom house is this officer, not a server at table. In modern prose about the role, the full term tide waiter is the clearer choice.
- 7A person employed to keep watch; a watchman.
A waiter called out the hours as he patrolled the sleeping town.
The night waiters reported no disturbance before dawn.
Note
The word's starting point: in late 14th-century Middle English, waiter already meant an attendant or a watchman. That was well before anyone waited at tables. The watchman meaning is now obsolete, so modern writing should simply say watchman. When the word turns up in very old texts beside a gate, a wall or the night, read it as someone keeping guard.
Showing meanings only.
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Origin
From late 14th century Middle English waiter or wayter, meaning "attendant" or "watchman," formed from wait plus -er. The sense of a "servant who waits at tables" dates from the late 15th century, originally referring to household servants and, from the 1660s, to those at inns and eating houses. The feminine form waitress was first recorded in 1834.