banquet
A banquet is a formal large meal or feast, where a number of people consume food together. Banquets are traditionally held to enhance the prestige of a host, or reinforce social bonds among joint contributors. Modern examples of these purposes include a charitable gathering, a ceremony, or a celebration. They often involve speeches in honor of the topic or guest of honour.
宴会是一种正式的大餐或盛宴，许多人一起吃食物。传统上，举办宴会是为了提高东道主的威望，或加强联合贡献者之间的社会联系。这些目的的现代例子包括慈善聚会、仪式或庆典。它们通常包括对主题或主宾的演讲。
The older English term for a lavish meal was a feast, and "banquet" originally meant a specific and different kind of meal, often following a feast, but in a different room or even building, which concentrated on sweet foods of various kinds. These became highly fashionable as sugar became much more common in Europe at the start of the 16th century. It was a grand form of the dessert course, and special banqueting houses, often on the roof or in the grounds of large houses, were built for them. Such meals are also called a "sugar collation".
较古老的英语词汇是盛宴，而“宴会”最初指的是一种特殊的、不同的餐食，通常在盛宴之后，但在不同的房间，甚至在不同的建筑里，集中于各种甜食。随着糖在16世纪初在欧洲变得越来越普遍，这种食品变得非常流行。这是一道盛大的甜点，为他们建造了特别的宴会厅，通常在屋顶或大房子的地面上。这种食物也被称为“糖整理”。
据牛津词典和LDOCE: collation: light meal, esp at an unusual time 小吃。a cold collation: 冷餐。而collate:
1. gather information together, examine it carefully, and compare it with other information to find any differences
2. arrange sheets of paper in the correct order =sort
动词和名词弗搭界？也许最原始的词义是gather candies together, arrange them, eat them happily? :-)
A luau is one variety of traditional banquet originally used in Hawaii. 卢奥是夏威夷最早使用的一种传统宴会。
Contemporary banquets serve many new purposes in addition to their traditional purposes. These can include anything from during workplace training sessions and formal business dinners to birthday parties and social gatherings. It is common for a banquet to be organized at the end of academic conferences.
除了传统的目的外，现代宴会还有许多新的目的。这些活动可以包括从工作场所培训课程、正式商务晚宴到生日派对和社交聚会的任何活动。在学术会议结束时举办宴会是很常见的。
The State Council of the People's Republic of China levied a tax on banquets on September 2nd 1988, at a tax rate calculated per occasion between 15% to 20% of the banquet's value. 中华人民共和国筵席税暂行条例 国务院令【1988】第16号...
http://www.law-lib.com/law/law_view.asp?id=5254
六级/考研单词: banquet, feast, consume, prestige, reinforce, ceremony, seldom, lavish, dessert, differentiate, contemporary, supper, conference, levy