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 Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 7:02 am
maître d' or maitre d' • may-truh-DEE • noun
: maître d'hôtel, headwaiter
Example Sentence:
The maître d' ushered the couple to a private table at the back of the restaurant.
Did you know?
"Maître d'" is short for "maître d'hôtel," which comes from French and literally means "master of the house." "Maître d'hôtel" was first used in English in the 16th century for a head butler or steward of a household, before it was adapted to refer to the head of a dining-room staff around the middle of the 19th century. (For the record, the plural of "maître d'hôtel" is "maîtres d'hôtel," whereas the plural of "maître d'" is "maître d's.") We began dropping the "hôtel" of "maître d'hôtel" about 50 years ago. At first, the abbreviated form was considered slang, but today "maître d'" is widely used in American English and is accepted as a standard American use.
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Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 1:10 pm
It is considered gauche to verbally offer the Maitre d' a tip. That can be viewed as a bribe, which is a no-no. It is best given discretly, if one is giving it at all, as part of a handshake (check old movies to see how elegantly this is done) or just offered without words for services offered beyond expectation, like an exceptionally good table.
BTW, it's incorrectly assumed by some that the word tip came about as an acronym for "to insure promptness" but it's just a cute word association, isn't it? mrgreen
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