menu
noun
Simple meaning
A list containing the food and beverages served at a restaurant, café.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
mehnyooSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈmɛnju
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A list containing the food and beverages served at a restaurant, café, or bar. Menus may be printed on paper sheets provided to customers, put on a large poster or display board inside the establishment, displayed outside the restaurant, or digital.
A list of dishes available at a restaurant
The food or drinks that are available in a restaurant, café, or bar.
The details of the food to be served at a banquet; a bill of fare.
A list or agenda.
An agenda of things to do
“They worked rapidly down the menu of reports.”
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A list containing the food and beverages served at a restaurant, café, or bar. Menus may be printed on paper sheets provided to customers, put on a large poster or display board inside the establishment, displayed outside the restaurant, or digital.
Used this way, menu is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in technology contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Technology
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use menu
- “The menu was in French.”noun
Share your sentence
Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A menu of options that appears below the item when the computer user clicks on it.
A secondary menu that appears while you are holding the cursor over an item on the primary menu.
A secondary menu that appears while you are holding the cursor over an item on the primary menu.
A list of options available to a computer user.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: list containing the food and beverages served at a restaurant
Use This Word
See how this word sounds in a real sentence.
Ask Vocabaura
Understand the word your way.
What Does It Mean Here?
Words can change meaning depending on context.
Use it yourself
Knowing “menu” starts when you use it. Pick a next step, all free.
Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.