Bartending

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The practice of skillfully creating and serving drinks at an establishment where alcohol is sold involves customer interaction and drink management
2. The art of mixing and serving drinks for customers encompasses both the preparation of a variety of beverages and the management of social interactions in a bar setting
3. The process of making and presenting alcoholic beverages to patrons ; the profession involving working behind a bar to serve drinks and manage customer service

Etymology: The bar in "bartending" is an older word than the drinks trade it now names. It passed from Vulgar Latin "barra", meaning a bar or barrier, into Old French as "barre", and then into Middle English as "bar". Over those centuries it kept its basic sense of a rail or obstacle, and the counter where drinks are served came later as an extension of that idea: a barrier separating the serving side from the customers. "Tending" is the ordinary English verb "tend", meaning to look after or attend to something, here used in the sense of attending to customers. Put together, the compound describes someone who looks after the bar, which is how the trade is described in the word itself. The "bar" part is the older and more surprising element, since it originally named a physical rail long before it meant a place to buy a drink.

Synonyms: mixing drinks, serving drinks