(The conjecture that sense 2 may have had some different origin, e.g., from buffet ‘sideboard,’ is historically baseless. No such form of the word as *buffetier exists; and beaufet, which has been cited as a phonetic link between buffet and beefeater, is merely an 18th-c. bad spelling, not so old as beef-eater.)]
1. An eater of beef; contemptuously, a well-fed menial. (Properly with hyphen, beef-eater.)
1610. Histrio-m., III. 99. Awake yee drowsie drones That long have suckt the honney from my hives: Begone yee greedy beefe-eaters y’are best.
a. 1628. F. Greville, Sidney (1652), 109. We conquered France, more by such factions and ambitious assistances than by any odds of our Bows, or Beef-eaters, as the French were then scornfully pleas’d to terme us.
1854. Badham, Halieut., 516. Amongst immortal gluttons, Hercules (βουφάγος) the beef-eater was chief.
2. Popular appellation of the Yeomen of the Guard, in the household of the Sovereign of Great Britain, instituted at the accession of Henry VII. in 1485; also of the Warders of the Tower of London, who were named Yeomen Extraordinary of the Guard in the reign of Edward VI., and wear the same antique uniform as the ‘Beefeaters of the Guard.’
1671. Crowne, Juliana, IV. 44. The Beef-eaters o’ the Guard. Ibid. You Beef-eater, you saucy cur.
1736. Fielding, Pasquin, II. i. 18–9. Is not there a sort of Employment, Sir, call’d—Beef-Eating? If your Lordship please to make me a Beef-Eater, I would have a Place fitted for my Capacity.
1779. Sheridan, Critic, III. i. (1781), 90. Enter BEEFEATER with his Halbert.
1848. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., I. 293. Without some better protection than that of the trainbands and beefeaters.
1864. H. Spencer, Illustr. Univ. Progr., 63. The Beefeaters at the Tower wear the costume of Henry VIIth’s bodyguard.
3. Ornith. A genus of African birds (Buphaga), called also Ox-peckers, allied to the Starling family, which live chiefly on parasitic larvæ hatched under the skin of cattle.
1836. Penny Cycl., VI. 22. The Beef-eater … or Pique-bœuf … digs and squeezes out with his forceps of a beak the larva that lies festering under the tough hide of the quadruped.
