waitron
A robotic or mechanical waiter.
Noun literature, media
- A robotic or mechanical waiter.
Origin
Etymology tree English waiter Proto-Indo-European *-tḗr Proto-Indo-European *-trom Proto-Hellenic *-tron Ancient Greek -τρον (-tron)bor. English -tron English waitron From waiter + -tron.
Forms
Noun nonstandard, rare
- A waiter or waitress.
- With adolescent perversity, he turned up his nose at all of the elegant French items on the Closerie's menu and scandalized the waitron by demanding corned-beef hash—fried extra crisp—with poached eggs, a slice of fresh...
- Table Service is the combined interaction between the guest and the waitron whilst seated at a table in the establishment's restaurant. - 2004 September 28, Tracey Dalton, The Food and Beverage Handbook, Lansdowne: Juta...
- If your wine waitron smells the cork, s/he's probably a beginner at this game because you can tell absolutely nothing by smelling the cork. - 2008 February 1, Jenny Ratcliffe-Wright, Spit Or Swallow: A Guide for the...
Origin
Coined as a gender-neutral substitute for waiter and waitress, this is one of the few words with the gender-neutral suffix -ron to have seen much use, probably re-inforced by rhyming with patron. (Some references instead analyse it as using the same "machinelike" suffix -tron as waitron (“mechanical waiter”), but more likely it uses -ron like laundron and like waiter and waitress use -er/-ress not *-ter/*-tress.)