Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To have dinner.
  • intransitive verb To give dinner to; entertain at dinner.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Dinner.
  • noun Dinner-time; midday.
  • To eat the chief meal of the day; take dinner; in a more general sense, to partake of a repast; eat.
  • To give a dinner to; furnish with the principal meal; entertain at dinner: as, the landlord dined a hundred men.
  • To dine upon; have to eat.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To give a dinner to; to furnish with the chief meal; to feed.
  • transitive verb obsolete To dine upon; to have to eat.
  • intransitive verb To eat the principal regular meal of the day; to take dinner.
  • intransitive verb to go without dinner; -- a phrase common in Elizabethan literature, said to be from the practice of the poor gentry, who beguiled the dinner hour by a promenade near the tomb of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in Old Saint Paul's.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb intransitive to eat; to eat dinner or supper
  • verb transitive, obsolete To give a dinner to; to furnish with the chief meal; to feed.
  • verb transitive, obsolete To dine upon; to have to eat.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb have supper; eat dinner
  • verb give dinner to; host for dinner

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English dinen, from Old French diner, disner, from Vulgar Latin *disiūnāre, from *disiēiūnāre : Latin dis-, dis- + Latin iēiūnium, fast.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French disner, from Vulgar Latin *disiūnāre, from disieiūnāre ("to break the fast"), from Late Latin, from dis- + iēiūnō ("to fast"), from Latin ieiūnus.

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Examples

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  • "'There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract,' Andrew E. Kramer wrote in The New York Times.

    Kramer's reference to 'suspicion' is an understatement. Furthermore, it is highly likely that the military occupation has taken the initiative in restoring the hated Iraq Petroleum Company, which, as Seamus Milne writes in the London Guardian, was imposed under British rule to 'dine off Iraq's wealth in a famously exploitative deal.'"

    - Noam Chomsky, It's the Oil, stupid!, Khaleej Times, 8 July 2008.

    March 5, 2009