Other forms: buffeted, buffets, buffeting
A buffet is a long table of dishes from which people serve themselves. A buffet lunch, the breakfast buffet, help yourself from the buffet.
It is pronounced BUFF-ay in Britain and buh-FAY in America, and it is the standard arrangement at weddings, conferences and hotel breakfasts. All-you-can-eat buffet and carvery are the commercial forms. There is a second, unrelated word spelled the same and pronounced BUFF-it, meaning to strike repeatedly — buffeted by the wind — which appears mainly in weather reports and in writing about ships and aircraft.
1nounbuffetA table of dishes where people serve themselves.
“The buffet was cleared out within about ten minutes.”
Patterna buffet lunch / breakfast / dinner · an all-you-can-eat buffet · help yourself at the buffet · buffet car
2verbstrikeTo strike repeatedly, of wind or waves.
“The little boat was buffeted the whole way across.”
buffet is a self-service meal.
BUFFET → the table where you help yourself
A long table of dishes and no waiter: you walk along it with an empty plate and take as much as you like. Say it boo-fay.
Old French buffet meant a stool and then a sideboard — the piece of furniture the food stood on. English took the furniture first and the meal only later, which is why a buffet is named after a table rather than after anything eaten.
Old French
buffet
Middle French
buffet — side table
Middle English
buffet — stool
English, today
buffet
Middle English buffet (“stool”), from Middle French buffet (“side table”), from Old French buffet, of unknown origin. The modern pronunciation is remodelled after modern buffet.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA