Barmecide feast

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)

1. A meal with very little or no food
   • 1915, P.G. Wodehouse, chapter 8, in Something Fresh, London: Hutchinson, page 122:

     [H]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.

2. Something that promises much but delivers nothing; an illusion.

Related terms

• barmecidal