• (British) enPR bo͝o'fā; IPA: /ˈbʊfeɪ/, /ˈbʌfeɪ/
• (America) enPR: bəfā', IPA: /bəˈfeɪ/

buffet (plural buffets)

1. A counter or sideboard from which food and drinks are served or may be bought.

   Synonyms: sideboard, smorgasbord, cupboard

   • 1909, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], chapter I, in The Squire’s Daughter, London: Methuen, OCLC 12026604 ↗; republished New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1919, OCLC 491297620 ↗:

     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.

2. Food laid out in this way, to which diners serve themselves.

   Synonyms: buffet meal, smorgasbord

3. A small stool; a stool for a buffet or counter.

   • Go fetch us a light buffet.

• French: buffet
• German: Anrichte, Büfett
• Portuguese: buffet
• Russian: буфе́т
• Spanish: bufé, bufet, ambigú

• German: Buffet
• Portuguese: buffet
• Russian: буфе́т

• enPR: bŭfʹĭt, IPA: /ˈbʌfɪt/

buffet (plural buffets)

1. A blow or cuff with or as if with the hand, or by any other solid object or the wind.

   Synonyms: blow, collision, cuff

   • 1805, Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel:

     On his cheek a buffet fell.

   • those planks of tough and hardy oak that used for years to brave the buffets of the Bay of Biscay

• enPR: bŭfʹĭt, IPA: /ˈbʌfɪt/

buffet (buffets, present participle buffeting; past and past participle buffeted)

1. (transitive) To strike with a buffet; to cuff; to slap.
   • Bible, Matthew xxvi. 67

     They spit in his face and buffeted him.

2. (transitive, figurative) to aggressively challenge, denounce, or criticise.
   • 2013 May 23, Sarah Lyall, "British Leader’s Liberal Turn Sets Off a Rebellion in His Party ↗," New York Times (retrieved 29 May 2013):

     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.

3. 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.

   • 1830, Joseph Plumb Martin, A Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier, Ch. I:

     [...] I buffetted heat and mosquetoes, and got the hay all up [...]

   • 1887, William Black, “A Keepsake”, in Sabina Zembra: A Novel [...] In Three Volumes, volume III, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., OCLC 22523627 ↗, page 146 ↗:

     You are lucky fellows who can live in a dreamland of your own, instead of being buffeted about the world—

4. To deaden the sound of (bells) by muffling the clapper.

buffet (plural buffets)

1. A low stool; a hassock.