cater.
To provide, particularly
Meaning & usage
To provide, particularly
To provide To provide with food, especially for a special occasion as a professional service.
I catered for her bat mitzvah.
His company catered our wedding.
To provide To provide anything required or desired, often (derogatory) to pander.
I always wanted someone to cater to my every whim.
To provide To tailor something to an intended audience.
The business caters for young professionals.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English catour (“acater, provisioner”), aphetic form of acatour (“acater”), from Old French acater (“to buy, to purchase”). Equivalent to cate + -er.
Synonym of acater: an officer who purchased cates (food supplies) for the steward of a large household or estate.
Synonym of caterer: any provider of food.
Synonym of purveyor: any provider of anything.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English catour (“acater, provisioner”), aphetic form of acatour (“acater”), from Old French acater (“to buy, to purchase”). Equivalent to cate + -er.
To place, set, move, or cut diagonally or rhomboidally.
Where this word comes from
Probably ultimately from French quatre (“four”), possibly via cater (“change-ringing”), although Liberman argues for a derivation from a North Germanic prefix meaning "crooked, angled, clumsy" from which he also derives cater-cousin and, via Norse, Old Irish cittach (“left-handed, awkward”). He finds this more likely than extension of the dice and change-ringing term cater as an adverb, given the likely cognates in other Germanic languages. Caterpillar and caterwaul are unrelated, being derived from cognates to cat, but may have influenced the pronunciation of Liberman's proposed earlier *cate- or undergone similar sound changes.
Diagonally.
Where this word comes from
Probably ultimately from French quatre (“four”), possibly via cater (“change-ringing”), although Liberman argues for a derivation from a North Germanic prefix meaning "crooked, angled, clumsy" from which he also derives cater-cousin and, via Norse, Old Irish cittach (“left-handed, awkward”). He finds this more likely than extension of the dice and change-ringing term cater as an adverb, given the likely cognates in other Germanic languages. Caterpillar and caterwaul are unrelated, being derived from cognates to cat, but may have influenced the pronunciation of Liberman's proposed earlier *cate- or undergone similar sound changes.
Four.
The four of cards or dice.
A method of ringing nine bells in four pairs with a ninth tenor bell.
Where this word comes from
From French quatre (“four”). Doublet of cuatro.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.