different between whack vs buffet

English

Etymology

Uncertain. Originally Scottish. Probably onomatopoeic, although possibly a variant of thwack.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /wæk/
• (without the wine–whine merger) IPA^(key): /?æk/
• Rhymes: -æk
• Homophone: wack (accents with the wine-whine merger)

Noun

whack (plural whacks)

1. The sound of a heavy strike.
2. The strike itself.
3. The stroke itself, regardless of its successful impact.
4. (US, slang) An attempt, a chance, a turn, a go, originally an attempt to beat someone or something.

   C'mon. Take a whack at it.

   40 bucks a whack.

5. (originally Britain cant, dated) A share, a portion, especially a full share or large portion.
   • 1906, Jack London, White Fang, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, Part 1, Chapter 2, p. 16,^[1]

     “It’s damned tame, whatever it is, comin’ in here at feedin’ time an’ gettin’ its whack of fish.”

   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, New York: Appleton, Chapter VII, page 108,^[2]

     “ […] O'Cannon's a taxpayer. He pays his whack towards the upkeep of the State School up in town—”

   • 1951, Katherine Mansfield, Letters to John Middleton Murry, 1913-1922,

     For one thing I had a splendid supper when I got on board—a whack of cold, lean beef and pighells, bread, butter ad lib., tea, and plenty of good bread.

   • 2014, Anthony Pritchard, Grand Prix Ferrari (page 203)

     There were problems over the installation of the engine and the handling. The team had paid top whack for the two Coopers, but the company gave them no help at all.

6. (obsolete) A whack-up: a division of an amount into separate whacks, a divvying up.
7. (US, obsolete) A deal, an agreement.
   • 1876, Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Ch. vi, page 70:

     "I'll stay if you will."
     "Good—that's a whack."

   It's a whack!

8. (typography, computing, slang) The backslash, ??\??.

   del c:\docs\readme.txt

   Delete c colon whack docs whack readme dot text.

Derived terms

• full whack
• have a whack at
• out of whack
• take a whack at
• top whack
• wacky
• whack up, whack-up

Translations

Verb

whack (third-person singular simple present whacks, present participle whacking, simple past and past participle whacked)

1. To hit, slap or strike.
   • G. W. Cable

     Rodsmen were whacking their way through willow brakes.

2. (slang) To kill, bump off.
3. (transitive, slang) To share or parcel out (often with up).

   to whack the spoils of a robbery

   • 1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, London: G. Newbold, Volume 2, p. 152,

     When the sewer-hunters consider they have searched long enough […] the gang […] count out the money they have picked up, and proceed to dispose of the old metal, bones, rope, &c.; this done, they then, as they term it, “whack” the whole lot; that is, they divide it equally among all hands.

4. (sports) To beat convincingly; to thrash.
   • 2012, Ryan Pyette, Majors, Panthers play mind games, The London Free Press:

     The fidgety Majors were whacked 9-1 by the Kitchener Panthers at Couch and now trail their rivals 2-0 in an increasingly uncomfortable best-of-seven Intercounty Baseball League first-round series.

5. (Britain, chiefly in the negative) To surpass; to better.
   • 2012, Steve Cullen, Total Flyfisher:

     Recently I was over in Ireland, I love the place, proper fishing, can't whack it!

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:kill

Derived terms

• whack off
• whack the illy

Translations

Adjective

whack (comparative whacker, superlative whackest)

1. Alternative form of wack (“crazy”)

   That's whack, yo!

   • 2007, Joyce E. Davis, Can't Stop The Shine, page 51:

     As they joked about the big butts on female celebrities and what rappers had the whackest lyrics, Malcolm paid little attention to Kalia besides squeezing her hand or grabbing her arm to hold himself up […]

References

• Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "whack, n." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1923.

English

Etymology 1

From French buffet.

Pronunciation

• (UK) enPR: bo?o'f?, b?'f?; IPA^(key): /?b?fe?/, /?b?fe?/
• (US) enPR: b?f?', IPA^(key): /b??fe?/

Noun

buffet (plural buffets)

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

   Synonyms: sideboard, smorgasbord, (obsolete) cupboard
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.
   • c. 15th century, author unknown, Wakefield Mystery Plays

     Go fetche us a light buffet.

Descendants

• ? Japanese: ????? (byuffe)
• ? Korean: ?? (bwipe)

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English 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: b?f??t, IPA^(key): /?b?f?t/

Noun

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, (by any solid object) collision, (with the hand) cuff

   • 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

Etymology 3

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

Pronunciation

• enPR: b?f??t, IPA^(key): /?b?f?t/

Verb

buffet (third-person singular simple present buffets, present participle buffeting or buffetting, simple past and past participle buffeted or buffetted)

1. (transitive) To strike with a buffet; to cuff; to slap.

   • They spit in his face and buffeted him.

2. (transitive, figuratively) 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

   • 1726, William Broome, epistle to Elijah Fenton

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

Translations

Etymology 4

Possibly from Middle French buffet (“side table”), of unknown origin.

Noun

buffet (plural buffets)

1. A low stool; a hassock.

Further reading

• buffet on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Finnish

Etymology

From French buffet.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?byf?e?/, [?byf?e??]
• IPA^(key): /?buf?et?i/, [?buf?e?t??i] (colloquial)

Noun

buffet

1. buffet

Usage notes

The endings of the alternative, somewhat Finnicized forms buffetti and especially bufetti better fit the structure of Finnish.

Most Finns don't know that the letter t in the form "buffet" is silent (and that the letter u is pronounced [y]) and are not sure how to decline this form because Finnish nouns don't end in -t in the singular. They therefore consciously or unconsciously change the ending in the nominative to the more Finnish ending -tti in speaking, despite the fact that the French pronunciation (with [y] and silent t) is the only one listed in the Kielitoimiston sanakirja.

Most Finns have trouble pronouncing the sound [b] and many the sound [f], so the completely Finnicized form puhvetti is in fact widespread in speech even though the spelling buffetti is the most common.

Declension

French

Etymology

From Middle French bufet (1150), from Old French bufet, of uncertain origin; possibly a Celtic borrowing. Compare Scottish Gaelic biadh (“food, sustenance”), buadha (“valuable, precious”). Or, according to the Digitized Treasury of the French Language, from an imitative source akin to bouffer (“to eat (in excess)”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /by.f?/

Noun

buffet m (plural buffets)

1. sideboard, dresser (a piece of furniture)
2. buffet (food)
3. (slang) belly

Synonyms

(sideboard):

• crédence

Derived terms

Descendants

References

• “buffet” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Further reading

• “buffet” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Italian

Etymology

From French buffet.

Noun

buffet m (invariable)

1. (furniture) sideboard

   Synonym: dispensa

2. buffet, refreshment bar

Further reading

• buffet in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Norwegian Bokmål

Alternative forms

• buffé, buffe

Etymology

From French buffet.

Noun

buffet m (definite singular buffeten, indefinite plural buffeter, definite plural buffetene)

1. sideboard or buffet (US) (dining room furniture containing table linen and services)
2. buffet (counter or room where refreshments are sold)
3. stående buffet - buffet (a meal which guests can serve themselves)

Norwegian Nynorsk

Alternative forms

• buffé, buffe

Etymology

From French buffet.

Noun

buffet m (definite singular buffeten, indefinite plural buffetar, definite plural buffetane)

1. sideboard or buffet (US) (dining room furniture containing table linen and services)
2. buffet (a counter or room where refreshments are sold)
3. ståande buffet - buffet (a meal which guests can serve themselves)

Portuguese

Alternative forms

• bufê, bufete
• bifê (proscribed)

Etymology

From French buffet.

Pronunciation

Noun

buffet m (plural buffets)

1. ? (proscribed) buffet (food laid out so diners may serve themselves)

Further reading

• “buffet” in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa.

Spanish

Alternative forms

• bufet

Etymology

From French buffet. Doublet of bufete.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bu?fet/, [bu?fet?]

Noun

buffet m (plural buffets)

1. buffet

Further reading

• “bufet” in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014.