Barmecide feast
nounEtymology From a tale in the Arabian Nights in which a rich man serves a beggar an imaginary banquet; see Barmecide.
1
A meal with very little or no food
- [H]e decided that his loved one was on the point of starvation. No human being, he held, could exist on such Barmecide feasts.1915, P.G. Wodehouse, chapter 8, in Something Fresh, London: Hutchinson, page 122:
- 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.1935, Milton H Stansbury, “The Surrealists”, in French Novelists of Today, University of Pennsylvania Press, pages 121-136:
2
Something that promises much but delivers nothing; an illusion.
- Related terms
- barmecidal