dîner

The standard verb for having dinner/the evening meal — the traditional spelling with the circumflex, still by far the more common form in writing despite the 1990 reform allowing diner as an alternative.

• Nous dînons généralement vers vingt heures. — We usually have dinner around 8pm.
• Ils m'ont invité à dîner chez eux. — They invited me to dinner at their place.
• Elle a dîné seule ce soir-là. — She had dinner alone that evening.

English speakers sometimes use dîner to mean any meal, by analogy with 'dinner' being used loosely — in French, dîner specifically means the evening meal; the midday meal is déjeuner, and confusing the two mealtimes is a classic beginner slip.

• film Le Dîner de cons — Francis Veber's 1998 comedy (English title The Dinner Game) — the top-grossing French film of that year in France, drawing over 9 million viewers and winning three César Awards, including Best Actor for Jacques Villeret.