Sommelier
//ˌsɒmˈmɛli.ə// noun, verb
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 The member of staff at a restaurant who keeps the wine cellar and advises the guests on a choice of wines; a wine steward / stewardess, a wine waiter / waitress / server.
"The sommelier recommended the perfect wine, opened the bottle with panache, and served it into glasses."
- 2 a waiter who manages wine service in a hotel or restaurant wordnet
Verb
- 1 To act as a sommelier. intransitive, rare
"The final nerve-wracking task involved “sommeliering” throughout a gourmet lunch for judges and wine writers – and answering the tricky questions which were inevitably thrown their way."
Example
More examples"The sommelier approves of customers who choose red wine with fish."
Etymology
Borrowed from French sommelier (“originally, a person in charge of the beasts of burden carrying wine”), from somme (“pack”) + -ier (suffix forming the names of jobs). somme is from Vulgar Latin *sauma, from Latin sagma (“packsaddle”).
Related phrases
More for "sommelier"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.