cover charge
- noun
- /ˈkʌvər tʃɑrdʒ/
- The restaurant has a cover charge of $5 per person on weekends.
- pay a cover charge
- cover charge, 10 bucks
- cover charge: $5
Not only that, after you pay a cover charge, you pay a guest cover charge cash bar.
- Not only that, after you pay a cover charge, you pay a guest cover charge cash bar.
Examples
-
On weekend evenings, The Abbey offers live music with no cover charge.
Blog text (1) -
Wait, what's the cover charge?
-
- Do you think the cover charge is gonna be high?
-
It's going to be a great night, no cover charge.
-
$2 cover charge only, folks!
-
There is no cover charge.
Blog text (11) -
The cover charge is $6.
Blog text (25) -
I didn't know there was a cover charge.
-
There'll be no cover charge.
-
Tyrone paid the five-dollar cover charge, and they went inside.
Fiction book (1994)
Synonyms
An extra charge added to the usual price for a service
A fixed fee charged to enter a restaurant or club
A fee you pay to enter a place or event
How Much
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is partly compositional: 'charge' clearly denotes a fee and 'cover' can be understood as covering costs, so a learner could reasonably infer this is a fee intended to cover something. However, the conventionalized meaning as a specific per-person entry fee (separate from food or drink) is a conventional usage that is not fully predictable from the constituents alone, making it only partially transparent.
Etymology
Cover charge comes from places that needed money to pay for things like a band or extra staff. They called that extra payment a cover because it 'covered' the cost and a charge because it was a payment, so today cover charge means the extra 'fee' you pay just 'to get in'.