- 1nA2
/ˌkæfəˈtɪriə/ · /ˌkæfəˈtɪəriə/
A place at school or work where you choose food that is already cooked and carry it to a table yourself.
自助餐廳
複數 cafeterias
核心畫面
Picture a long counter with the food already cooked and sitting there in trays — rice, soup, a few hot dishes, some fruit. You take a tray, walk along the line, point at what you want or pick it up yourself, pay at the end, and carry your own food to a table. Nobody comes to your seat to take an order. That walk-along-and-help-yourself eating room, usually inside a school, a hospital, an office or a factory rather than out on the street, is the whole picture of the word.
可以想成一條長長的取餐檯，菜早就煮好了，一盤一盤放在那裡——飯、湯、幾道熱菜、幾樣水果。你拿一個托盤，沿著檯子走，看…更多收起
可以想成一條長長的取餐檯，菜早就煮好了，一盤一盤放在那裡——飯、湯、幾道熱菜、幾樣水果。你拿一個托盤，沿著檯子走，看到想吃的就指一指或自己夾，走到底結帳，再自己端到位子上坐下。沒有人會走到你桌邊幫你點餐。這個「自己走、自己拿、自己端」的用餐空間，通常長在學校、醫院、公司或工廠裡面，而不是開在街上做生意，就是這個字的全部畫面。From the word’s history
From Mexican Spanish cafeteria 'coffee store' — cafe 'coffee' plus Spanish -teria 'a place where something is done'. It entered American English in 1839 simply meaning 'a cafe', and only by the 1890s settled on 'self-service dining establishment'. English speakers then re-read the ending -teria as if it meant 'help yourself', and from about 1923 started coining new words with it on that basis.
這個字來自墨西哥西班牙文的 cafeteria「賣咖啡的店」，是 cafe（咖啡）加上西班牙文的 -teria（做某件事的場所）。1839 年進入美式英文時，它就只是「咖啡館」的意思，一直到 1890 年代才定下來變成「自助式的餐飲場所」。有趣的是，英語使用者後來把字尾 -teria 讀成好像本身就帶著「自己動手拿」的意思，從 1923 年前後開始照這個感覺造新字。所以「自助」這一層並不是原本就藏在字裡的，是後來一路用出來、再被回頭讀進去的。
Online Etymology Dictionary (etymonline.com), entry 'cafeteria'
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
cafeterianoun/ˌka.fə.ˈtɪə̯.ɹi.ə/
- 1
A restaurant in which customers select their food at a counter then carry it on a tray to a table to eat.
- 2
A dining area in an institution where meals may be purchased (as above), provided, or brought in from elsewhere.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。