Define "Dining"

[Chris Amirault]

I thought I'd ask the participants to come up with their own working definitions of "dining." Steven wrote,

By dining, I'm thinking of more than just eating. While dining may occur at home or in the restaurant, it has to occur as an activity unto itself. In my opinion, grabbing a sandwich for lunch is not, except in the most unusual circumstances, is not dining. Then again, I see plenty of people in restaurants like Per Se and Alain Ducasse who seem not to be dining either.

Here, "dining" seems a version of eating that is elevated from the mundane and prosaic, a particular kind of experience. How would you qualify that experience? Might that experience change in the future in some fundamental ways?

[Bux]

Some dictionaries define dining as the act of taking dinner. If dinner is the principle meal of the day, I suppose one can dine at lunch, if lunch is your dinner that day. Context is a large part of the meaning of any word. I think in this context however, your "eating that is elevated from the mundane and prosaic," may be as good a definition as we'll agree upon. I suggested that there may be a social context to dining, but I'm not sure one couldn't dine alone either at a restaurant or even at home. If we travel alone, either for business or pleasure, we should be able to dine as well as eat.

In this context however, there are subcontexts. Even within a group that might consider visiting an Olive Garden, some will go to sate an appetite and others will see themselves as dining.

[Pan]

I think Bux said that about as well as anyone is likely to. I'll add only that if the sandwich one is picking up for lunch is a pastrami sandwich from Katz's, that's some fine dining there. (Sorry, Chris, I went to Katz's for dinner tonight, so it's on my brain.)

[Daniel Rogov]

Animals eat

Men and women dine

Men and women of good taste dine well

[M.X.Hassett]

Animals eat

Men and women dine

Men and women of good taste dine well

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This should be submitted to the O.E.D.