maitre d'hotel

See also: maître d'hotel and maître d'hôtel

English

Noun

maitre d'hotel (plural maitres d'hotel)

1. Alternative spelling of maître d'hôtel.
   • 1810 December, John Quincy Adams, “1809–1814: St. Petersburg”, in David Waldstreicher, editor, Diaries, volume I (1779–1821), New York, N.Y.: The Library of America, published 2017, →ISBN, page 195:

     We have a Maitre d’Hotel, or Steward — A Cook who has under him, two Scullions — Moozhiks.

   • 1920, The Hotel World: The Hotel and Travelers Journal, volume 90, →OCLC, page 47, column 2:

     Julius Vanice, the maitre d’hotel of the Pennsylvania, New York City, came to that position from the Detroit Statler.

   • 1963 April, Robert Silverberg, “To See the Invisible Man”, in Frederik Pohl, editor, Worlds of Tomorrow, volume 1, number 1, New York, N.Y.: The Barmaray Co., Inc., →ISSN, page 155, column 1:

     I never got seated. 1 stood in the entrance half an hour, bypassed again and again by a maitre d’hotel who had clearly been through all this many times before. Walking to a seat, I realized, would gain me nothing. No waiter would take my order.

   • 1992 March, Michael Jahn, “Fireflies Across the Graveyard”, in City of God (A Lieutenant Bill Donovan Mystery), New York, N.Y.: Thomas Dunne Books, →ISBN, page 49:

     Avignon was a friend of cops who knew he would make them look good in the papers, and loved by bribable maitres d’hotel who he paid well for tips about when Cher was around with her latest lover.

   • 2016, Jerry Eckert, “‘If I Have Served My People - - -’”, in Weeping Kings and Wild Boars: Moments of Magic and Sorrow in Forty Years Trying to Save the World, Fort Collins, Colo.: Hot Chocolate Press, →ISBN, page 144:

     The manager pushed his waiter aside, grabbed some menus, draped a linen napkin over his arm, and with the flair of a maitre d’hotel, escorted us to a prominent table.

   • 2016, Miles Quest, Jim Cartwright, “[Between the wars – and into wartime] Who was doing the training?”, in Service on a Plate: The Story of Contract Catering, Gravesend, Kent: H2O Publishing, →ISBN, page 20:

     Little wonder, then, that despite Sir Isidore’s interest in popular catering, Westminster’s cookery courses were concerned solely with haute cuisine while anyone wishing to become a waiter aimed to be a maitre d’hotel.

   • 2017 [1930], Philip MacDonald, “[Reel One] Sequence the Second […]”, in The Rynox Mystery: An Exercise in Crime (The Detective Story Club), London: Collins Crime Club, →ISBN, section 3, pages 32–33:

     There’s a maitre d’hotel with long pitchers just behind. Have a cigar, Tony, go on?

     Originally maître d’hôtel.

   • 2018, David Ignatius, “Old Town, Alexandria”, in The Quantum Spy: A Thriller, New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN, page 88:

     He took her for dinner to a restaurant on K Street that had dim lighting and black-leather banquettes with a maitre d’hotel who sang Puccini and Verdi arias in a liquid baritone voice.