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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
sit-down
I.adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
protest
▪ Nearly 1,000 fans staged a sit-down protest calling for Branfoot's head, despite the victory sealed by Richard Hall's header.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ We offer a cafeteria and a sit-down service at very reasonable rates.
▪ We usually organize a sit-down dinner, but we wanted to go for something less formal this year.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A sit-down interview with Ricki Lake?
▪ And the first new sit-down restaurant to open in Watts after the 1965 riots did not do so until November 1991.
▪ Instead of a sit-down meal at the reception, everybody milled around, eating from trays of finger foods.
▪ Leave the crystal and good china to those intimate, sit-down dinner parties.
▪ Like many walk-in, sit-down cafes, they also sell pastries and fruit drinks.
▪ Nearly 1,000 fans staged a sit-down protest calling for Branfoot's head, despite the victory sealed by Richard Hall's header.
▪ What is the maximum number of diners which will have to be accommodated at a sit-down meal?
II.noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ My friends had to have their first sit-down in sight of the car.
▪ The others acknowledged us cheerily, clearly relieved to have been allowed 30 seconds for a sit-down.
▪ Yes, George and I have had our sit-down.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
sit-down

1836 of meals, 1936 of strikes, from verbal phrase (c.1200), from sit (v.) + down (adv.); as a noun, sit-down "act of sitting down" is from 1861.

Wiktionary
sit-down

a. Intended to be done while sitting. n. 1 An act of sitting down, especially with other people in some form of social exchange. 2 A sit-in, a protest of civil disobedience by people sitting and refusing to move.

WordNet
sit-down

n. a strike in which workers refuse to leave the workplace until a settlement is reached [syn: sit-down strike]

Usage examples of "sit-down".

The bakery now is its own room next to the main kitchen, and there are windows and an outside door and industrial-strength fans, but in July and August pretty much everyone but me has to get out of there and splash water on themselves and have a sit-down.

Everyone came in jeans or and the food consisted of cheese and crackers, carrot ely sticks with dill dip, and her famous, artery-clogging guacamole and taco chips--or if it was a formal sit-down dinner, lasagna and garlic bread.

After all, all the blackmailer has to do is either threaten to disfigure a batch of stars so no one will ever work for Gainsworthy, or, and this may be more probable, he may threaten to make all the stars he controls go on a sit-down strike.

The members appointed to the NLRB were less sympathetic to labor, the Supreme Court declared sit-downs to be illegal, and state governments were passing laws to hamper strikes, picketing, boycotts.

She fussed at him while they were enjoying a warm sit-down meal of chili con carne and tamales near the livery, where he'd paid some kids to curry and water their ponies while they cooled off and ate some genuine oats as reward for a job half-done.

With their flags of allegiance discreetly furled and their anonymity protected by sprites, aliases, and the NSA's best smoke and mirrors, the Sit-Downs seeded and highlighted the themes Rochet wanted to see emerge.

But as he returned to barracks to pass the word of the march around camp, he made himself a solemn vow: using every ruse he could think of, from slow-ups to sit-downs to minor mutinies, Dixie Deans somehow intended to reach the Allied lines with all twelve thousand men of Stalag 357.

Having treated themselves to a sit-down pizza (extra mushrooms on one half) with side salad when the Records Office had closed at four, Peter and Sam were now standing in the buffet of a near-empty British Rail train.

Heard Stoker Riley, a real trouble-maker, that Riley, and the others planning a locked door, sit-down strike in the boiler-room when they return to duty.

Then I am going on a sit-down strike right in the middle of your airlock.

Resistance', and she grinned, ‘is increasing and the Catteni have had to call in reinforcements to deal with stoppages and sit-downs and all kinds of passive movements.