Word.ws English Dictionary

à la carte

/ˌæ.ləˈkɑːt/US/ˌɑ.ləˈkɑɹt/

à la carte adjective: allowing selection from a fixed list of individually priced options shown on the menu.

Adjective

à la carte (not comparable)

  1. (food and drink) Allowing selection from a fixed list of individually priced options shown on the menu.
    • The restaurant had a huge à la carte menu and four specials that day.
    Antonyms:
    table d'hôte
  2. (broadly, figuratively) Selective; only choosing what one likes or desires.
    • As twin studies proliferated throughout the nineteen-eighties, their results contributed to substantial changes in our moral intuitions. When schizophrenia and autism, for example, turned out to be largely heritable, we no longer blamed these disorders on cold or inept mothers. But, for such...2021 September 6, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, “Can Progressives Be Convinced That Genetics Matters?”, in The New Yorker
    Synonyms:
    cherry-picking
  3. (Philippines, particularly in restaurants) A meal but only the viand (without rice).

Adverb

à la carte (not comparable)

  1. By ordering individually priced items from the menu.
    • There were two divisions in the restaurants I used to visit. One division, which was patronized by fairly well-to-do people, provided any number of courses from which one chose and paid for à la carte, each dinner thus costing from one to two shillings. The other division provided six-penny dinners...1925-29, Mahadev Desai (translator), M.K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Part I, chapter xvii
    • DCI Tom Barnaby: You don't do eye of newt or toe of frog, wool of bat or tongue of dog, then?
      Waitress: Not à la carte, sir.1998 May 6, Douglas Watkinson et al., “Death in Disguise”, in Midsomer Murders
    Antonyms:
    table d'hôte

à la carte meaning in Indonesian

à la carte in Indonesian

allowing selection from a menu
à la carte

Synonyms of à la carte

Antonyms

Forms of à la carte

alternative forma la carte
alternative formà-la-carte

Origin of à la carte

Unadapted borrowing from French à la carte (“on the menu; according to the card”).

Words that rhyme with à la carte

32 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about à la carte

What does à la carte mean?
À la carte means allowing selection from a fixed list of individually priced options shown on the menu.
What is à la carte in Indonesian?
À la carte in Indonesian is à la carte. See À la carte meaning in Indonesian.
What part of speech is à la carte?
À la carte can be an adjective or an adverb.
How do you pronounce à la carte?
À la carte is pronounced /ˌæ.ləˈkɑːt/ (UK).

Words near à la carte in the dictionary

  1. à contrecoeur
  2. à contrecœur
  3. à deux
  4. à gogo
  5. à la
  6. à la carte
  7. à la king
  8. à la minute
  9. à la mode
  10. à la nage
  11. à la russe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: à la carte (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-à la carte.wav.

Cite this entry: “à la carte.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/%C3%A0_la_carte. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.