dinner lady

English

Etymology

Ellipsis of school dinner lady.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

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Noun

dinner lady (plural dinner ladies)

1. (British, informal) A woman employed to serve food in a school or work canteen.

   Synonyms: (US) lunch lady, (UK) school dinner lady

   • 2015 April 4, Sally Weale, “The new dinner lady: 10 years on, can an Ottolenghi chef prove Jamie Oliver's revolution wasn't a flash in the pan?”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     Ten years to the month after Jamie Oliver began his school food revolution – with the help of a formidable dinner lady called Nora Sands at Kidbrooke school in south London – a small inner-city primary on the other side of the Thames is doing its best to give it a new lease of life.

Derived terms

• dinner lady arm

Translations

woman employed to serve food

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 食堂阿姨 (shítáng āyí)