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''buffet'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260615002359-00-⌔

buffet - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

buffet (plural buffets)

  • A counter or sideboard from which food and drinks are served or may be bought.
    • ✤ Synonyms: sideboard, smorgasbord, (obsolete) cupboard
    • ✤ 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 school-children surreptitiously breaking loose from an assembly of grown-ups.1
  • Food laid out in this way, to which diners serve themselves.
    • ✤ Synonyms: buffet meal, smorgasbord
    • ✤ We’ll be serving supper buffet style.
    • ✤ “We got a big buffet coming up soon. Bacon, eggs, fresh fruit you wouldn’t believe.”2
  • A small low stool; a hassock.

Noun

buffet (countable and uncountable, plural buffets)

  • (countable) A blow or cuff with or as if with the hand, or by any other solid object or the wind.
    • ✤ Synonyms: blow, (by any solid object) collision, (with the hand) cuff
    • ✤ On his cheek a buffet fell.3
    • ✤ those planks of tough and hardy oak that used for years to brave the buffets of the Bay of Biscay4
    • ✤ 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.5
  • (aviation, uncountable) 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 the left wing and would not be felt by the left horizontal stabilizer. There would be little or no buffet. The DFDR also indicated that there was some turbulence, which could have masked any aerodynamic buffeting. Since the roll to the left began at V + 6 and since the pilots were aware that V was well above the aircraft’s stall speed, they probably did not suspect that the roll to the left indicated a stall. In fact, the roll probably confused them, especially since the stickshaker had not activated.6

Verb

buffet (third-person singular simple present buffets, present participlebuffeting or (rare) buffetting, simple past and past participlebuffeted or (rare) buffetted)

  • (transitive) To strike with a buffet; to cuff; to slap.
    • ✤ They spit in his face and buffeted him.7
  • (transitive, figurative) To aggressively challenge, denounce, or criticise.
    • ✤ Synonym: batter
    • ✤ 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 environment in which he was much buffeted — which, we are told, drove him to an early grave.8
    • ✤ * 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 mainstream Conservatism, Mr. Cameron earlier this week took the highly unusual step of sending a mass e-mail (or, as he called it, “a personal note”) to his party’s grass-roots members.*9
  • To affect as with blows; to strike repeatedly; to strive with or contend against.
    • ✤ Synonym: batter
    • ✤ to buffet the billows
    • ✤ The sudden hurricane in thunder roars,/Buffets the bark, and whirls it from the shores.10
    • ✤ […] I buffetted heat and mosquetoes, and got the hay all up […]11
    • ✤ You are lucky fellows who can live in a dreamland of your own, instead of being buffeted about the world—12
    • ✤ Atlantic gales constantly buffet Morwenstow, whose seven hamlets together constitute Cornwall’s most northerly parish. The village is dotted with trees moulded into weird shapes by the wind, and above the trees rise the vicarage chimneystacks resembling miniature church towers.13
  • To deaden the sound of (bells) by muffling the clapper.
  • (intransitive) 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.14

Etymology 1

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.

Pronunciation

  • (UK) enPR: bo͝o’fā, bŭ’fā; IPA: /ˈbʊf.eɪ/, /ˈbʌf.eɪ/
  • (US) enPR: bəfā’, IPA: /bəˈfeɪ/, /bʌˈfeɪ/
  • (India) IPA: /ˈbə.feː/, /bəˈfeː/, /ˈbʊ.feː/, /bʊˈfeː/
  • Rhymes: (US) -eɪ

Etymology 2

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”).

Pronunciation

  • enPR: bŭfʹĭt, IPA: /ˈbʌf.ɪt/, /ˈbʌf.ət/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊

Etymology 3

From Middle English buffeten, from Old French buffeter, from the noun (see above).

Pronunciation

  • enPR: bŭfʹĭt, IPA: /ˈbʌf.ɪt/, /ˈbʌf.ət/

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1909 September 9, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], “A Court Ball”, in The Squire’s Daughter, London: Methuen & Co. […], →OCLC, page 9: ↩

  2. 1992, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, page 312: ↩

  3. 1805, Walter Scott, “”, in The Lay of the Last Minstrel: A Poem, London: […] [James Ballantyne] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, […], and A[rchibald] Constable and Co., […], →OCLC: ↩

  4. October 30, 1795, Edmund Burke, letter to Lord Auckland ↩

  5. 1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter VII and XIV: ↩

  6. 1979 December 21, National Transportation Safety Board, “Aircraft and Flightcrew Performance”, in Aircraft Accident Report: American Airlines, Inc., DC-10-10, N110AA, Chicago-O’Hare International Airport, Chicago, Illinois, May 25, 1979 ‎, archived from the original on 17 August 2022, page 54: ↩

  7. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 26:67: ↩

  8. 1977 August 20, Robert Etherington, “John Horne Burns and His Enemies”, in Gay Community News, volume 5, number 7, page 10: ↩

  9. 2013 May 23, Sarah Lyall, “British Leader’s Liberal Turn Sets Off a Rebellion in His Party”, in New York Times, retrieved 29 May 2013: ↩

  10. 1726, William Broome, epistle to Elijah Fenton: ↩

  11. 1830, Joseph Plumb Martin, “Ch. I”, in A Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier: ↩

  12. 1887, William Black, “A Keepsake”, in Sabina Zembra […], volume III, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 146: ↩

  13. 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 288: ↩

  14. 2012, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], “Tug of War”, in Ratburger, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN, pages 200–201: ↩

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