Serving is a portion of food intended for one person. When you dish out spaghetti at dinner, one serving might be about a cup of pasta with sauce. Recipe books often specify how many servings a dish makes: “This pizza recipe makes eight servings” means it should feed eight people.

The word helps us think about how much food is appropriate or healthy to eat at once. A serving of vegetables might be half a cup, while a serving of chicken might be about the size of a deck of cards. Food packages list nutrition information per serving, so you can see how many calories, vitamins, or grams of sugar you're getting in one portion.

Serving can also mean the act of providing food to others. When you're serving dinner to your family, you're dishing out the food and bringing it to the table. A waiter in a restaurant is serving customers by taking orders and bringing meals.

In sports, serving means starting a point by hitting the ball to your opponent, like in tennis or volleyball. The player who is serving gets to put the ball in play, giving them a chance to control how the point begins.