A bun-worry

[owlfish]

The phrase "bunfight" has been in avid use today, apropos of UK university Clearing, the process by which would-be university students go shopping for last-minute university paces, this year run on an unprecedented scale. (For example, in this THE article.I've assumed from long-casual reading that it meant "a conflict over something relatively

Comments

[lil_shepherd]

To me, a 'bun fight' is either a tea party or something very like it with lots of people scrabbling for the tea and food or, metaphorically, "lots of people in a confined space trying to do or buy things" (which is, I suspect, what many of the people talking about clearing meant.) Ina says the same. Of course, we are both in our sixties...

[inamac]

I've mostly heard it in connection with the January Sales - to which the University Clearing system bears a lot of similarity. Lots of people scrabbling for a limited amount of goods in a short period of time.

[gillo]

I think in this instance the implication is that it's a crowded mess, as a real fight with cream buns would be.

I always used to hate this day, at school, dealing with traumatised kids who actually believe they have no future of any kind. Though it was satisfying to help them and always nice to hug those who had done well.

Now I have a lot of sympathy for university folks, also dealing with tearful teenagers. Bloody government made it all much worse for everybody, of course.

[alextiefling]

I may not be representative here, but I think of the rise of the 'squabble' meaning of bunfight as very recent indeed. When I was younger, it invariably meant some kind of catered event that stopped short of a full meal.

[desperance]

Fairly sure I encountered bun-fight as meaning merely a tea-party in both Wodehouse and Sayers.