waiter

noun

1. 1

   A male or female attendant who serves customers at their tables in a restaurant, café or similar.

   Waiter! There's a fly in my soup.

   She was a fat, round little woman, richly apparelled in velvet and lace, […]; and the way she laughed, cackling like a hen, the way she talked to the waiters and the maid,[…]—all these unexpected phenomena impelled one to hysterical mirth, and made one class her with such immortally ludicrous types as Ally Sloper, the Widow Twankey, or Miss Moucher.

   A waiter brought his aperitif, which was a small scotch and soda, and as he sipped it gratefully he sighed. ‘Civilized,’ he said to Mr. Campion. ‘Humanizing.’ […] ‘Cigars and summer days and women in big hats with swansdown face-powder, that's what it reminds me of.’

2. 2

   Someone who waits for somebody or something; a person who is waiting.

   However, the NTPF also contained implicit negative incentives for the public sector by offering alternative private sector treatment for the longest waiters at no extra cost to patients or no penalty to public providers.

3. 3

   historicalA person working as an attendant at the London Stock Exchange.

4. 4

   obsoleteA vessel or tray on which something is carried, as dishes, etc.; a salver. (See etymology of dumbwaiter.)

   Cautioning her, in these terms, not to trip over a heterogeneous litter of pastry-cook’s trays, lamps, waiters full of glasses, and piles of rout seats which were strewn about the hall, plainly bespeaking a late party on the previous night, the man led the way to the second story […]

5. 5

   obsoleteA custom house officer; a tide waiter.

6. 6

   obsoleteA watchman.

verb

1. 1

   To work as a waiter.

   I had definitely had my fill of factory jobs, but had never worked in an office, nor bussed, nor waitered.

   He dropped out and waitered at the Spain but was fired for throwing water in a customer’s face.

   John [Jasper] started out as a cart boy, helping the ox-cart driver manage the oxen; but he was so smart that he was soon transferred to the house, where he waitered and worked in the garden.

Forms

plural

waiters

past tense

waitered

past participle

waitered

present participle

waitering

third person singular

waiters