Forms: 3–6 buffett(e, 3–5 boffet(e, 4 bofet(t, -at, 5 bofette, bufet, 7 buffit, 3– buffet. [app. a. OF. buffet, bouffet, a blow, dim. of buffe BUFF sb.1]
A blow, stroke; now usually one given with the hand. † Pl. Fisticuffs (rare). Blindman(’s) buffet (also blind and buffet) = BLINDMAN’S BUFF.
a. 1225. Ancr. R., 182. Nolde me tellen him alre monne dusigest, þet forsoke enne buffet, uor one speres wunde.
a. 1340. Hampole, Psalter lxviii. 23. I suffire vnrightwisly shame in bofetis & spittyngis.
c. 1382. Wyclif, Mark xiv. 65. And summe bigunnen for to bispitte him, and to hide his yȝen, and smyte him with boffatis.
c. 1450. Merlin, xxviii. 571. Galashin … yaf hym … a buffet with his swerde.
1605. Verstegan, Dec. Intell., ii. (1628), 32. A Hollander and a Frenchman … falling out, went to buffets.
1675. Hobbes, Odyssey (1677), 86. How much we do all other men excel At wrestling, buffets, leaping.
1702. Pope, Wife Bath, 416. I … with one buffet fell’d him on the floor.
1783. Ainsworth, Lat. Dict. (Morell), I. s.v. Blind, To play a blind and buffet, andabatarum more pugnare.
1805. Scott, Last Minstrel, III. x. On his cheek a buffet fell, So fierce, it stretched him on the plain.
1840. Dickens, Old C. Shop, xii. A shower of buffets rained down upon his person.
1879. O. W. Holmes, Motley, xviii. 132. The letter was like a buffet on the cheek.
c. 1325. E. E. Allit. P., B. 885. Þay blwe a buffet in blande þat banned peple.
1605. Shaks., Macb., III. i. 109. I am one, My Liege, Whom the vile Blowes and Buffets of the World Hath so incens’d, that I am recklesse what I doe, To spight the World.
1792. S. Rogers, Pleas. Mem., I. 326. The traveller whose altered form Has borne the buffet of the mountain storm.
1875. Hamerton, Intell. Life, V. ii. 178. The buffets of unkindly fortune.
