![]() ![]() All the barn-doors and we'll sit out the lancers-and the waltzes, too, if you like and we'll make it a perpetual bun-fight for old Mother Helmsdale.įrom " Temperance at Shahjehanpur," in The Thin Red Line: The Regimental Paper of the 2d Batt., (Princess Louise's) Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders (April 1899): Oh, I know the place trust me you trust me: if I can't order a ripping little lunch for the two of us, then take me away and fling me into the nearest horse-pond. Miss Eelin, I can see you on the first floor of the Old Ship, looking out. ![]() From William Black, Wild Eelin: Her Escapades, Adventures & Bitter Sorrows (1898): Limiting the inquiry to the bun-based terms, I find these early specimens. ![]() So that brings the jocular variants on a tea-party theme to a crooked baker's dozen ( bun-beat, bun-feast, bun-fight, bun-struggle, bun-worry, crumpet-scramble, muffin-fight, muffin-worry, tea-fight, tea-scramble, and tea-shine). Occ tea-scramble (C.20 : Manchon) and tea-shine "].Īnd then from Partridge, Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, eighth edition (1984):īun-beat or -fight. A tea-party for sailors or soldiers : military and naval : from ca. His edition of Partridge also has an entry for bun-struggle or bun-worry:īun-struggle or -worry. crumpet-scramble Derby Day, 1864, 'There are men who do not disdain muffin-worries and crumpet-scrambles.'"], muffin-worry resp ca. First from Partridge, Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, second edition (1938):īun-feast or -fight. Can also apply to a cocktail party or similar get-together.Įric Partridge manages to multiply the difficulty by finding ten additional terms to grapple with. There is no equivalent jocular American colloquialism. very large tea party Inf Sometimes bun feast. Norman Schur, British English A to Zed: A Definitive Guide to the Queen's English (2013) takes a more demure line:īun fight, n. (The Oxford Dictionary errs in supposing bun-fight means tea-party.) Crowded party where you have to fight to get something to eat. This suggests a fight over buns rather than with buns.Īnn Barr & Peter York, The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook: The First Guide to What Really Matters in Life (1982) explicitly takes issue with the Oxford English Dictionary with regard to the term's meaning, though why we should believe Barr & York is not entirely clear:īun-fight n. with image of children struggling for sticky buns. Jonathon Green, The Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (1984) offers a bit of a twist on that definition:īunfight n. The traditional meaning of bun fight appears in a glossary entry in Hippocrene Language and Travel Guide to Britain (1996): The term bun fight is evidently widely used across nations of the old British Commonwealth and goes back to the late 1800s. It derives from disputes between antagonists who are both hot and Expressions and Sayings says much the same as World Wide Words.Īlthough everything the above sources say sounds reasonable, does anyone have evidence of the origin of the phrase and evidence of how it came to have such disparate meanings?įinally, towards the end of the comments on another, unrelated question, one of ELU's most erudite gurus offers as a hypothesis that World Wide Words offers an explanation of the origin as Victorian children squabbling over buns and cakes at teatime, but has no back-up evidence. There is perhaps a difference in British and US usage. In nature to the participants but not to everyone else.Īccording to WiseGEEK, the origin may be in the late 19th century, and the term can mean either a formal event, a large party or a petty argument. The OED gives a single quote, from 1928, which uses the words wayzgoose and Eisteddfod and is thus not very helpful, even after one looks up those words.Īt the other end of the scale (erudition or stuffiness, take your pick), The Urban Dictionary defines bun-fight as:Ī sustained, overblown argument about a petty matter, usually personal The Oxford English Dictionary defines a bun-fight as:
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