a la carte
1
5.1
- noun
- /ˌɑː lə ˈkɑːrt/
:
a la carta
- At the restaurant, you can choose from a variety of dishes on the a la carte menu.
- a la carte menu
- order a la carte
- a la carte items
So they have either prep meals or they have a la carte.
- So they have either prep meals or they have a la carte.
Examples
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WouId you care for the daily special, or wouId you Iike to order a la carte?
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Oh gods, a la carte networks on a shifting, impulse-buy system would be fantastic.
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One orders the tasting menu, the other one a la carte.
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Being user-friendly would be opening up the architecture so we could buy "features" a la carte.
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Clyde ordered himself a soft boiled egg off the a la carte menu.
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It's channel 212 and is free until Sept. 26, at which time it will be part of a package, or you can pay a la carte for $5 a month.
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Instead, they buy songs a la carte on iTunes or, increasingly, subscribe to services that let them listen to music on demand without actually owning the song.
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We used to be able to do that when we used an actual satellite dish—order channels a la carte.
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Tacos are available a la carte for $2 each or as a combo plate with two tacos, rice, and beans ($7.95).
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For dinner, we decided to order everything a la carte to try different dishes.
How Structured
Surface Forms
Morphology
a + la + carte
This is a direct borrowing from French (à la carte) whose literal parts ('a' + 'la' + 'carte') are not productive English morphemes; the full meaning ('each dish priced/ordered separately, by the menu') is compositional in French but not obviously derivable to an English learner who only knows English words. Learners who recognize 'carte' as 'menu' or who know Romance-language equivalents (e.g. Spanish a la carta) will find it partially transparent, but for many B1 learners the foreign article + noun structure makes the phrase only partially predictable.
Etymology
A la carte comes from French; the word carte means 'card' or 'menu', and the phrase was used on menus to show each dish had its own price. So it now means a menu or system where each dish is ordered and paid for separately.