bufferdom

bufferdom

English

Etymology

From buffer +‎ -dom.

Noun

bufferdom (uncountable)

1. (UK) The state of being an ‘old buffer’, or a conservative, somewhat foolish old man.
   • 1994, Christopher Hitchens, ‘On Spanking’, London Review of Books, vol. 16, no. 20:

     Sometime in the late autumn of 1977, I went to a book party that was held in the Rosebery Room of the House of Lords. Why I went I can’t think – the volume was some piece of unreadable bufferdom extruded by Lord Butler […].

   • 2002, Mary Riddell, The New Statesman, 5 August:

     Her predecessors, Stephen Tumim and David Ramsbotham, pillars of establishment bufferdom with impeccable social consciences, had enraged the Home Secretaries to whom they reported.

   • 2010, William Langley, The Telegraph, 11 April:

     It would be tempting to see in Malcolm McLaren's final years the descent into amiable bufferdom of a once free spirit, and to conclude that the ---- Establishment always wins in the end.