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He wanted to have a bottle but it's twenty minutes to dinner.

"It's about to dinner."

"It's almost dinner."

What word should I use in the sentence above? about or almost?

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  • "It's about to be dinner time." "We're about to have dinner." It's almost dinner time."
    – Livrecache
    Nov 10, 2017 at 7:03

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Certainly not the first one. We do not use "about to" in this sense. But "it's almost dinner" would be acceptable. I think it would be understood as a shorter form of "it's almost dinnertime".

The only common situation I can think of in which one would say "about to" is when it's preceded by a form of "to be" and followed by a verb. In that case, it means the action will happen very soon.

  • It is about to rain = It will rain very soon
  • He is about to go to Seattle = He will go to Seattle very soon
  • It's about to be dinnertime = It will be dinnertime very soon

and so on.

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    @1010 - Yes, "It is about to dinner" is ungrammatical. David Z did a good job of explaining: you can only use "is about to" with a verb, but dinner is not a verb.
    – stangdon
    Nov 10, 2017 at 14:53
  • @stangdon- Yes,you are right. unfortunately,I missed the last paragraph!!
    – 1010
    Nov 10, 2017 at 15:08

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