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Glite Dictionary
🧈 Tastes like butter 😏 Too smooth 🏺 A food storeroom ☕ A student cafe
buttery

buttery

9.9
A room or shop in a college where students buy tea and snacks
  • noun
  • /ˈbʌtəri/
  • Jargon
translation icon : cafetería
  • The students gathered in the buttery to enjoy some warm tea and pastries between classes.

Examples

  • The university's buttery was bustling with activity as students lined up for snacks.

  • Moira often whispered with Mr. Kwis in the buttery.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • After a long day of lectures, he loved to relax in the buttery with his friends.

How Big

dining-hall
20 2.1
cafeteria
218 1.0
canteen
  • UK
14 2.4
buttery
  • Jargon
9.9
snack bar
10 1.3
tuck shop
  • UK
4.5

Surface Forms

buttery singular
butteries plural

Morphology

buttery = butt (opaque) = butt + ery

This university 'buttery' continues the older storeroom sense, but the connection to 'butt' is obscure and the modern refreshment-room meaning is not directly inferable.

Etymology

Buttery at universities kept the old name because the college storeroom grew into a small shop where students could buy tea, snacks and light meals. So the modern university buttery is simply a place to get drinks and simple food.