cafeteria tray
1
1.0
- noun
- /ˌkæfəˈtɪəriə treɪ/
:
bandeja de cafetería
- She placed her salad and drink on the cafeteria tray before heading to a table.
Just a crazy amount of food on your cafeteria tray.
- Just a crazy amount of food on your cafeteria tray.
Examples
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The school cafeteria provides a cafeteria tray for students to carry their lunch.
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My friend, he grabbed the back of his cafeteria tray, and he smashed them all!
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At the buffet, guests used a cafeteria tray to collect their food choices.
Synonyms
311
1.0
A flat, shallow container used to carry or hold food and dishes
1
9.8
A flat tray often made of silver that people use to serve food or drinks
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and transparently derived from combining 'cafeteria' (a self-service dining area) with 'tray' (a flat container for serving food): it denotes a tray used in a cafeteria. This is a straightforward noun–noun composition with no idiomatic shift, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Cafeteria tray comes from the flat tray used in a cafeteria to hold plates, cups, and food while people walk to a table. Because people carry food on the tray and then return or stack it after eating, the phrase simply means 'a flat tray used to carry food and drink' in a cafeteria.