caféteria
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: caféterias
Etymology: From French caféteria. Most likely influenced by café, as the more common form in French, cafétéria, is less common in English than this one.
Senses: examples: text: The general arrangement of our mess hall, scullery, and kitchen made it easy to provide for a caféteria service.
ref: 1915, United States Naval Medical Bulletin, volume 9, number 3, page 427:
text: The caféteria and kitchen are in the basement, which, since the land falls away in the rear, is entirely open to light and air.
ref: 1916, The Craftsman, volume 25, page 573:
text: A lunch room recently equipped by the Students’ Association at the Harvard Medical School has been turned over to the Union to be operated on the caféteria plan.
ref: 1917, Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, Annual Report, page 36:
text: The lunch room will feed 1,800 students, boys and girls separately, in 30 minutes, on the caféteria plan.
ref: 1917, The Heating and Ventilating Magazine, volume 14, page 27, column 2:
text: Bonuses, rest rooms, showers, caféterias, etc. are hardly known to exist, and a large percentage of the public feels that a mill is a place where an employe works long hours of back-breaking work for small wages and under very poor working conditions.
ref: 1920, Textile World Journal, volume 56, page 30, column 4:
text: A distinctive type of lighting fitting has been put on the market by Messrs. Harcourts, Ltd., which is particularly suitable for restaurants, cafés, quick-lunch bars, caféterias, etc.
ref: 1935, Illuminating Engineering Society, Light and Lighting and Environmental Design, volume 28, page 246:
text: These Societies—784 with 102,701 members, Turnover amounting to Gold £5,197,210, Share Capital to Gold £672,949, and Reserves to Gold £880,456—include Building and Housing Societies, Workers’ Clubs, Emporiums, Health Societies, Mutual Aid Societies, Pharmacies, Co-operative Libraries and Publishing Societies, Artisans’ Societies, Transportation Society (Bus Company), Caféterias, etc., and thus represent a great variety of activities.
ref: 1939, International Co-operative Alliance, Review of International Co-operation, volume 32, page 293:
text: The industry is composed of a variety of establishments ranging from caféterias, to caterers, camp feeding operations, fine dining rooms, fast-food operations, and hotel food service outlets, to name just a few.
ref: 1999, H. Berberoğlu, Introduction to Modern Canadian Tourism: Including Catering to the Mature Market and Recycling, Food & Beverage Consultants, →ISBN, page 137:
text: After the 1957 Anti-Rightist campaign, there was no way she could be an enterprise manager, and she was eventually assigned to work in the caféteria of the People’s Political Consultative Congress activity center. She immediately began to dedicate the same kind of managerial energy to running the caféteria. Not only did she help to set up a managerial system for the caféteria, she designed and ordered kitchen utensils, and personally made the Sichuan-style pickled vegetables. She converted this caféteria into a good place for Congress members to get a little good food during the years of famine that followed the Great Leap Forward.
ref: 2013, Barry Naughton, editor, Wu Jinglian: Voice of Reform in China, MIT Press, →ISBN:
text: Most restaurants and caféterias will offer a broadly similar menu of Polish standards, kicking off with a solid repertoire of soups.
ref: 2018, The Rough Guide to Poland, Rough Guides, →ISBN:
glosses: Uncommon spelling of cafeteria.