Why do you have limitations to eat buffet? In a show a line goes" she is known to eat from both sides of the buffet" . The subtitle said it means "she has bisexual orientation" . First, I don't know i

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Damon

Why do you have limitations to eat buffet? In a show a line goes" she is known to eat from both sides of the buffet" . The subtitle said it means "she has bisexual orientation" . First, I don't know if this expression is commonly used. Second, in China it doesn't make sense. Because our restaurants which serve buffet has no such limitations. You can eat whatever you want as long as you don't waste it. Not like you can only eat one-side food. If not so, why does it call buffet?

18 ott 2016 10:08

Commenti · 13

We don't have limitations! This isn't about limitations - it's about preferences.

Let's say you have a buffet with hot food on one side and cold on the other, savoury food on one side and sweet on the other, or or spicy food on one side and bland food on the other. (Or whatever distinction you care to make.) Now, there'll be some people who choose to eat only savoury food, there'll be others who'll only eat sweet food, and there'll be others who'll eat both.

Likewise with sexual preferences. Some people like men, and some people like women. And there are others who like both. In the buffet of life, that's their choice.

18 ottobre 2016

I wouldn't think about it too much... the key innuendo is "both sides". Another common expression is "to swing both ways".

18 ottobre 2016

Yes the Chinese preference for having food placed in the centre of a round table makes the Buffet analogy just not work. In Europe a Buffet is laid out along a rectangular table and customers/guests select the food from one side while standing up and walk back to other tables to eat. Normally the food is laid out by type, either starters, mains and deserts or say Indian, Chinese, French, deserts.

Inuendo, given that homosexuality was illegal in many European countries until relatively recently and yet "aware" people knew a code there have been many phrases you might bump into including

batting for the other side (cricket is the core of this phrase)

a friend of Dorothy

take the bus to Hebden Bridge (for our Lesbian friends)

any more?

18 ottobre 2016

I'm glad it's clear to you now, Damon.

By the way, when I tried googling the phrase, I couldn't find any other examples of it, and my searches took me straight back to this page. This makes me think that the screenwriter invented the idiom. What's interesting, though, is that the meaning was still immediately clear to native speakers. This shows how accustomed we are to picking up on innuendos, particularly risqué ones. What was the show, as a matter of interest?

18 ottobre 2016