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Buffer   /bˈəfər/   Listen
Buffer

noun
1.
(chemistry) an ionic compound that resists changes in its pH.
2.
A neutral zone between two rival powers that is created in order to diminish the danger of conflict.  Synonym: buffer zone.
3.
An inclined metal frame at the front of a locomotive to clear the track.  Synonyms: cowcatcher, fender, pilot.
4.
(computer science) a part of RAM used for temporary storage of data that is waiting to be sent to a device; used to compensate for differences in the rate of flow of data between components of a computer system.  Synonyms: buffer storage, buffer store.
5.
A power tool used to buff surfaces.  Synonym: polisher.
6.
A cushion-like device that reduces shock due to an impact.  Synonym: fender.
7.
An implement consisting of soft material mounted on a block; used for polishing (as in manicuring).  Synonym: buff.



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"Buffer" Quotes from Famous Books



... past year he had been a self-constituted buffer between Mr. Clarke and the men in the furnace-room, and he wondered anxiously what ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... fair to let Persia give a similar advantage to Russia in Northern Persia. Nothing but a friendly understanding between England and Russia, which should clearly define the respective spheres of influence, will save the integrity of Persia. That country should remain an independent buffer state between Russia and India. But to bring about this result it is more than necessary that we should support Persia on our side, as much as Russia does on hers, or the balance is bound to go in the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... every beast toward man was one of fear or fierce hate. These sambur, on the contrary, seemed rather to welcome the companionship of the tribe, as if looking to it for some protection against the strange pursuing peril. His sleepless sagacity perceiving the value of this great escort as a buffer against the contact of less kindly hordes, Grom gave strict orders that none of these beasts should be molested. And the Cave Folk, not without apprehension, found themselves traveling in the vanguard of an army of tall, high-antlered ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... done was to surround yourself with this mercenary body, whom you call the royal cuirassiers, only, instead of three hundred, you should have two thousand. Self-interest will make them true to you. You might find some means to pay them, for they would be a good buffer between you and your enemies. The president of the Diet and the members are passing bills which will eventually undermine you. How long it will take I can not say. But this last folly, the loan, which you could have got on without, caps the climax. The duke ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... last year together in India it was evident that downright antagonism had existed between Hugo Tancred and his little son. Tony had weighed his father and found him wanting; and it was clear that he had tried to insert his small personality as a buffer between his father ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... he said softly, "I love you better because you're young and unformed. I can help you, dear, and you can help me, of course; I'm a dreadful old buffer in many ways. I'm forty, you know, and you're such a child. How old ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... from naming the ugly thing because it was so ugly. So dark and deep a dread coiled round the man, as he contemplated it, that he sought to drape the dreadfulness in some kind of thin, transparent veil, and to put the buffer of a word between him and its hideousness. But the Christian's motive for the use of the word is the precise opposite. He uses the gentler expression because the thing has ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... with a buffer state and ally in Southern Europe, meaning Turkey, so she has cleverly succeeded in creating a similar condition in the extreme north of Europe. Sweden and Norway, at no time friendly to the Moscovite—you need only recall the ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... Mr. Joseph T. Kaufman invented and turned loose upon the people of Glasgow an infernal machine intended to soar considerably in a quiet kind of way and to be propelled by steam. It looked like the bird known to ornithology as the flyupithecrick, and had an air brake, patent coupler, buffer and platform. It was intended to hold two men on ice and a rosewood casket with silver handles. It was mounted on wheels, and, as it did not seem to skim through the air very much, the people of Glasgow hitched a clothes line to it and used it ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... by lot, because the result would be on the whole quite as satisfactory as that obtained by the present system, while disappointed candidates would curse Fortune, who has a broader back than the Prime Minister. No doubt examinations were introduced on the same sort of principle, to act as a buffer between the train of candidates and the engine of Government. That the examination often comes after instead of before the appointment is a necessary modification, without which no room would be left for the play of those kindly feelings for kith and kin which we bitterly nickname nepotism. ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... bellance: An' ez they seemed to feel they wuz wastin' their tellents 'Thout some un to kick, 't warn't more 'n proper, you know, Each should funnish his part; an' sence they found the toe, An' we wuzn't cherubs—wal, we found the buffer, For fear thet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... desperately and with apoplectic puffings to these things is an essentially grotesque figure. To listen to young men discussing one of these my belated contemporaries, and to hear one enforcing on another the amusement to be gained from watching the old buffer's manoeuvres, is a lesson against undue youthfulness. One can indeed give amusement without loss of dignity, by being open to being induced to join in such things occasionally in an elderly way, without ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Eli meant to fashion some sort of buffer, that would break the fall should the couple above find themselves compelled to jump; and it was a splendid scheme to be formed on the spur of that dreadful moment, one that Cuthbert never could ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... vice-chief—the right-hand man of His Excellency. I am a buffer between him and the heads of divisions. This has led to the erroneous assumption which I cannot too ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... legislation curbing and crippling, if not abolishing, the Upper House, he can either assent or refuse. Assent means the destruction of a portion of the Constitution—and a portion very close to the Throne and which acts as a real buffer against the hasty action of an impetuous and sometimes imperious Commons. Refusal means that the Ministry must resign or go to the country on an issue in which it is quite possible the ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... hope for eventual success in the conflict with England. To this end its territorial conquests must be partitioned into three classes: those within the "natural limits," and already named, for incorporation; those to be erected into buffer states to fend off from the tender republic absolutism and all its horrors; and finally such districts as might be valuable for exchange in order to the eventual consolidation of the first two classes. Of the second type, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... Feng, at their head. It was subsequently raised to ten, another prince of the blood, Prince Ching, becoming president. The members were spoken of collectively as the prince and ministers. For a long time the board had no real power, and was looked on rather as a buffer between the foreign envoys and the real government. The importance of foreign affairs, however, especially since the Japanese War, identified the Yamen more with the grand council, several of the most prominent ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... and working for yours only. A first-rate traveller's trick! Ha! ha! we are the diplomatists of commerce. Famous! As for your prospectus, I'll take charge of that. I've got a friend—early childhood—Andoche Finot, son of the hat-maker in the Rue du Coq, the old buffer who launched me into travelling on hats. Andoche, who has a great deal of wit,—he got it all out of the heads tiled by his father,—he is in literature; he does the minor theatres in the 'Courrier des Spectacles.' His father, an old dog chock-full of reasons ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... hostilities divided the island into two de facto autonomous areas, a Greek area controlled by the Cypriot Government (59% of the island's land area) and a Turkish-Cypriot area (37% of the island), that are separated by a UN buffer zone (4% of the island); there are two UK sovereign base areas within the Greek Cypriot ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... charged highest for the lowest seats. Wonder whether a lion ever nipped up and helped himself to some fat old buffer in the Stalls when the martyrs turned out a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various

... way under their combined weight, and allow them to plunge downward. A solid phalanx of the sturdy football players had formed directly beneath, and they seemed determined that if anything of this sort took place they would serve as a buffer, so that those who fell through ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... however, which gave to his life the effect of strangeness. It was, rather, his work, which swept him into a maelstrom of new activities. Austin needed rest and he knew it. Richard was young and strong. The older man, using his assistant as a buffer between himself and a demanding public, felt no compunction. His own apprenticeship ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey

... "You've been a buffer between us and the enemy more than once, but it took a mind like Stonewall Jackson's to keep moving you around so you would stand between the armies of the enemy and make the Yankees fight, only one ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... remarkably well; nevertheless, a series of collisions, varying in intensity, marked the path of the pair upon the rather crowded platform. In such emergencies Miss Boke proved herself deft in swinging William to act as a buffer, and he several times found himself heavily stricken from the rear; anon his face would be pressed suffocatingly into Miss Boke's hair, without the slightest wish on his part for such intimacy. He had a helpless feeling, fully warranted by the circumstances. Also, he ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... "O Brother." It never entered his head that any living human being could disobey his orders; and he was the buffer between the servants and his Mamma's wrath. The working of that household turned on Tods, who was adored by every one from the dhoby to the dog-boy. Even Futteh Khan, the villainous loafer khit from Mussoorie, shirked risking Tods' displeasure for fear ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... truth in the face. It wasn't the Russian people who were pledged to you, with whom you were bound in alliance. It was that accursed trick all European politicians have of making secret treaties and secret understandings, building up buffer States, trying to whittle away a piece of the map for yourselves, trying all the time to be dishonest under the shadow of what is called diplomacy. That is what brought the war about. It was never the will of the people. It was the Hohenzollerns and the Romanoffs, the ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... latter has up to the present declined to do so. China wants nothing more than the re-establishment of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, with recognition of the autonomy of the territory immediately under the control of the Lhassa Government; she is agreeable to the British idea of forming an effective buffer territory in so far as it is consistent with equity and justice; she is anxious that her trade interest should be looked after by her trade agents as do the British, a point which is agreeable even to the Tibetans, though apparently not to the British; in other words, she expects that Great ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... side, and the contents are at once emptied clean out. In order that the bodies of the wagons may not touch at the top, when several are coupled together, each end of the wagon is furnished with a buffer, composed of a flat iron bar cranked, and furnished with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various

... by reaching for Berry's shoulder with his forepaws, but at the critical moment his buffer flinched, the paws fell short of their objective, and with a startled grunt the terrier fell heavily into the bath, his desperate claws leaving two long ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... Church, which influences their policy to the present time. The principality of Dioclea, or Zeta, as it soon became called, was one of the confederate Serb states formed by Heraclius in 622 A.D., to act as a buffer state against the inroads of the Avars. Each state was ruled by a Zupan or Prince who owed allegiance to the Grand Zupan, the head of the heptarchy. But the confederation was very loose, the rival chieftains fighting amongst one another for the supremacy, for the Serb race has ever ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... and these are the original and only genuine MASSAGE ROLLERS made. The making of others that are infringements on our patents have been stopped or they are inferior and practically worthless. In these each wheel turns separately, and around the centre of each is a band or buffer of elastic rubber. ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon

... bloods set off on Christmas day to race the frozen strait for the hand of buffer Beauvais's daughter Claire, but when her lover's horse, a wiry Indian nag, came pacing in it fled before their happiness. It was twice seen on the roof of the stable where that sour-faced, evil-eyed old mumbler, Jean Beaugrand, kept his horse, Sans Souci—a beast that, spite of its hundred years ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... an at once too," he went on, gettin varry red i' th' face, "do yo think at aw shall submit to be poisoned wi yor vile, disgustin tobacca smook? sich men as yo should ride in a cattle truck or a dog box—tho' if yo wor in there yo'd be taichin th' cawves an puppies bad habbits—Owd buffer, indeed! I'll ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley

... was no mistaking it—what could be clearer. Latin, inter, between; venio, I come. Marion may have translated it differently, but she had served in the capacity of buffer too ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick

... particular colour. Monday was black, and Saturday was gold, but Sunday never had been painted anything. Though a buffer- day between a vanished week and a week of labour coming, it was of uncertain character. Queer, grave people came back to lunch. There were collects and a vague uneasiness about the heathen being unfed and naked. There was a collection, ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... aluminium platforms, two Daimler motor engines of 16-horse power, working aluminium propellers of four blades at the rate of 1,000 revolutions a minute. Finally, firmly attached to the inner framework by rods of aluminium, were two cars of the same metal, furnished with buffer springs to break the force of a fall. The trial trip was not made till the summer following—June, 1900—and, in the meanwhile, experiments had gone forward with another mode of flight, terminating, unhappily, in the death ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... sketch of Belgian neutrality with the year 1632, when Cardinal Richelieu proposed that Belgium should be converted into an independent republic. Doubtless the desire to found a buffer State inspired Richelieu, just as it did the representatives of Prussia, Russia, France, Austria and England when they drew up the treaty guaranteeing Belgium's neutrality in perpetuity, at the Conference ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... see the Chief Constable, Knox. Aylesbury must be superseded at whatever cost. If the Chief Constable fails I shall not hesitate to go higher. I will get along to the garage. I don't expect to be more than an hour. Meanwhile, do your best to act as a buffer between Aylesbury and the women. You ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... of 80 a minute, and as the pile sank, the hammer followed it down with never relaxing activity until it was driven home to the required depth. One of the most ingenious contrivances employed in the driver, which was also adopted in the hammer, was the use of steam as a buffer in the upper part of the cylinder, which had the effect of a recoil spring, and greatly enhanced the force of ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... were thus by their position the barrier tribes of the South, who had to stand the brunt of our advance, and who acted as a buffer between us and the French and Spaniards of the Gulf and the lower Mississippi. Their fate once decided, that of the Chickasaws and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... other, the power required for hoisting is reduced. To adapt this hoist to handling form lumber the bucket is replaced by the lumber carriage shown by Fig. 216; this carriage discharges over the head of the mixer and the spring buffer shown by Fig. 214 is to take the shock of the rising carriage. This buffer is omitted when concrete only is to be hoisted. In one case this device has hoisted 520 batches of 12 cu. ft. each to the fourth floor in 8 hours, or nearly 19 cu. yds. per hour. In another case 65 trips per ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... young man of large ideas. In the rapid growth of California he saw a threat to Mexico and proposed to that government, as a "buffer" state between the two republics, to form a French colony in the Mexican State of Sonora. Sonora is that part of Mexico which directly joins on the south with our State of Arizona. The President of Mexico gave Boulbon permission to attempt this, and in 1852 he landed at Guaymas in the Gulf of ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... nine, arter the fust lootenant,—Number One, as we calls 'im,—arter 'e 'ad finished tellin' off the 'ands for their work arter divisions, the doctor 'appened to be standin' close alongside 'im, Number One beckons to the chief buffer..." ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling

... made the best they could of him, though it was painfully apparent to the livery-stable keepers, and others, who had the best interest of the place at heart, that such a red-faced, gloveless, drab-breeched, mahogany-booted buffer, who would throw off at the right time, and who resolutely set his great stubbly-cheeked face against all show meets and social intercourse in the field, was not exactly the man for a civilized place. Whether time might have enlightened Mr. Slocdolager as to the fact, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... I should be delighted to play buffer, but unfortunately I have some work I must do ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... undergo ossification, in which condition they are hard and unyielding. The plantar cushion is a wedge-shaped mass of tough, elastic, fibro-fatty tissue filling all the space between the lateral cartilages, forming the fleshy heels and the fleshy frog, and serving as a buffer to disperse shock when the foot is set to the ground. It extends forward underneath the navicular bone and perforans tendon, and protects these structures from injurious pressure from below. Instantaneous photographs ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... anger at so trifling an error very ridiculous and insulting, and shall shoot him the first time he comes to town. An Independent Press is not to be muzzled by any absurd old buffer with a crooked nose, and a sister who is considerably more mother than wife. Not as long as we have our usual success in thinning out the judiciary ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... republic, having the position of a "buffer" state between Germany, Italy, France, and Austria-Hungary. Racially, the state is divided among Italians, French, and Germans; as a matter of fact, however, the old Helvetian spirit, which not even Caesar could destroy, is still a great factor in dominating the ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... according to his enemies—as British Resident and protector of the infant prince occupying the uneasy throne. The task of regenerating Granthi society from the top, much against its will, and welding its discordant elements into a peaceful, prosperous, and contented buffer state (the thing was known, though not as yet the name) against encroaching Ethiopia on the north, promised to be no easy one, but Colonel Antony was undertaking it confidently, with the support of two or three of his brothers and a picked band of assistants ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... axle guards of the trailing wheels are formed of two 1/2 inch plates, with cast iron blocks between them to serve as guides. The ends of the rectangular frame are formed of plates 3/4 thick, and at the front end there is a buffer beam of oak 4-1/2 inches thick and 15 inches deep. The draw bolt is 2 inches diameter. There are two strong stays on each side, joining the barrel of the boiler to the inside framing, and one angle iron on each side joining the bottom of the smoke box ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... carrying at its end three or more air-compressing pumps set radially, with the piston-rods thrust outwards by a strong spring on each, but with the ends perfectly free from any attachment, yet fitted with a buffer or wheel. As the pendulum moves it throws one or more of these piston-rod ends into contact with the inner surface of the ring, driving it into the compressing pump. At the top of the pendulum there is a double or universal ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... door, had a moment of unholy exultation. Old black Tom, the butler, had been Madam's chief domestic prop for a quarter of a century. He had been the patient buffer between her and the other servants, taking her domineering with unfailing meekness, and even venturing her defense when mutiny threatened below stairs. "You-all don't understand old Miss," he would say loyally. "She's all right, only she's jes' ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice



Words linked to "Buffer" :   car, buff, motorcar, read/write memory, engine, compound, locomotive, computer science, random access memory, automobile, chemical compound, memory cache, random-access memory, chemical science, ram, modify, storage device, device, buffing wheel, machine, locomotive engine, memory device, random memory, cowcatcher, implement, railway locomotive, cache, chemistry, zone, computing, auto, framework, power tool



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