buffet
A counter or sideboard from which food and drinks are served or may be bought.
Noun
- A counter or sideboard from which food and drinks are served or may be bought.
- They stayed together during three dances, went out on to the terrace, explored wherever they were permitted to explore, paid two visits to the buffet, and enjoyed themselves much in the same way as if they had been...
Synonyms: sideboard smorgasbord cupboard
- Food laid out in this way, to which diners serve themselves.
- We'll be serving supper buffet style.
- "We got a big buffet coming up soon. Bacon, eggs, fresh fruit you wouldn't believe." - 1992, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, page 312:
Synonyms: buffet meal smorgasbord
- A small low stool; a hassock.
Origin
Inherited from Middle English buffet (“stool”), from Middle French buffet (“side table”), from Old French buffet, of unknown origin. The modern pronunciation is remodelled after modern French buffet.
Forms
Derived
autobuffet buffet bowling buffet car buffeteria finger buffet fork buffet scatter buffet tea buffet
Noun Entry 2
- A blow or cuff with or as if with the hand, or by any other solid object or the wind.
- On his cheek a buffet fell. - 1805, Walter Scott, “(please specify the page)”, in The Lay of the Last Minstrel: A Poem, London: […] [James Ballantyne] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, […], and A[rchibald] Constable...
- October 30, 1795, Edmund Burke, letter to Lord Auckland those planks of tough and hardy oak that used for years to brave the buffets of the Bay of Biscay
- Kipper stood blinking, as I had sometimes seen him do at the boxing tourneys in which he indulged when in receipt of a shrewd buffet on some tender spot like the tip of the nose. - 1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the...
- The vibration of an aircraft when flying in or approaching a stall, caused by separation of airflow from the aircraft's wings.
- The aircraft configuration was such that there was little or no warning of the stall onset. The inboard slats were extended, and therefore, the flow separation from the stall would be limited to the outboard segment of...
Origin
From Middle English buffet (“buffet”), from Old French buffet, diminutive of buffe, cognate with Italian buffetto. See buffer, buffoon, and compare German puffen (“to jostle, to hustle”).
Forms
Derived
Verb
- To strike with a buffet; to cuff; to slap.
- They spit in his face and buffeted him. - 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 26:67:
- To aggressively challenge, denounce, or criticise.
- Is Burns obscure because he was gay and therefore ignorable until the Gay Rights Movement began? Or does he largely deserve his neglect? An answer requires that one examine not only Burns' books, but also the critical...
- Buffeted by criticism of his policy on Europe, battered by rebellion in the ranks over his bill to legalize same-sex marriage and wounded by the perception that he is supercilious, contemptuous and out of touch with...
Synonyms: batter
- To affect as with blows; to strike repeatedly; to strive with or contend against.
- to buffet the billows
- The sudden hurricane in thunder roars, / Buffets the bark, and whirls it from the shores. - 1726, William Broome, epistle to Elijah Fenton:
- [...] I buffetted heat and mosquetoes, and got the hay all up [...] - 1830, Joseph Plumb Martin, “Ch. I”, in A Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier:
Synonyms: batter
- To deaden the sound of (bells) by muffling the clapper.
- To struggle, contend; also in figurative or extended use: to move as if driven by force.
- Again the chirpy tone did nothing to pacify the woman holding on to her ankles. Soon Zoe was buffeting back and forward through the hole. - 2012, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], “Tug of War”, in...
Origin
From Middle English buffeten, from Old French buffeter, from the noun (see above).