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Barmecide feast. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
Barmecide feast, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
Barmecide feast in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
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English
Etymology
From a tale in the Arabian Nights in which a rich man serves a beggar an imaginary banquet; see Barmecide.
Noun
Barmecide feast (plural Barmecide feasts)
- A meal with very little or no food
1915, P.G. Wodehouse, chapter 8, in Something Fresh, London: Hutchinson, page 122:e decided that his loved one was on the point of starvation. No human being, he held, could exist on such Barmecide feasts.
1935, Milton H Stansbury, “The Surrealists”, in French Novelists of Today, University of Pennsylvania Press, pages 121-136:Arthur Rimbaud, in a hotel dining room where, though indulging in a Barmecide feast before empty plates and glasses, he evinces the most evident signs of gastronomic enjoyment.
- Something that promises much but delivers nothing; an illusion.