breakfast

English

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breakfast

Wikipedia

Etymology

From Middle English brekefast, brekefaste, equivalent to break +‎ fast (literally, "to end the nightly fast"), likely a variant of Old English fæstenbryċe, (literally, "fast-breach"). Cognate with Dutch breekvasten (“breakfast”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɹɛkfəst/

• Audio (US)

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• Audio (UK)

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• (meal eaten after religious fasting, also): (US) IPA^(key): /ˈbɹeɪkˌfæst/, (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈbreɪkˌfɑːst/

Noun

breakfast (countable and uncountable, plural breakfasts)

1. The first meal of the day, usually eaten in the morning.

   You should put more protein in her breakfast so she will grow.

   • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, ”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies.  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , page 125, column 2:

     A ſorry Breakfaſt for my Lord Protector.

   • 1921, Ben Travers, A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC:

     Peter, after the manner of man at the breakfast table, had allowed half his kedgeree to get cold and was sniggering over a letter. Sophia looked at him sharply. The only letter she had received was from her mother. Sophia’s mother was not a humourist.

2. (by extension) A meal consisting of food normally eaten in the morning, which may typically include eggs, sausages, toast, bacon, etc.

   We serve breakfast all day.

3. The celebratory meal served after a wedding (and occasionally after other solemnities e.g. a funeral).
4. (largely obsolete outside religion) A meal eaten after a period of (now often religious) fasting.
   • c. 1693?, John Dryden, Amaryllis

     The wolves will get a breakfast by my death.

Usage notes

• In the sense "meal eaten after a period of (now often religious) fasting", the word is more often spelled break-fast or break fast; it is also often pronounced differently.

Derived terms

Descendants

Translations

See also

• brunch
• jentacular

Verb

breakfast (third-person singular simple present breakfasts, present participle breakfasting, simple past and past participle breakfasted)

2. (intransitive) To eat the morning meal.
   • May 14, 1689, Matthew Prior, epistle to Fleetwood Shephard Esq.

     First, sir, I read, and then I breakfast.

   • 1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter I, in Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. , volume II, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., , →OCLC, page 12:

     “Oh, he set off the moment he had breakfasted! […]”

   • 1941 August, C. Hamilton Ellis, “The English Station”, in Railway Magazine, page 356:

     Fifty years ago, the traveller might breakfast well at home in London, and take nothing more than a cup of coffee at King's Cross.

3. (transitive) To serve breakfast to.
   • 1987, Anne McCaffrey, The Lady: A Tale of Ireland, page 269:

     By seven-thirty she had breakfasted them, provided each with a packed lunch and Thermoses of coffee and tea

Synonyms

• break one's fast

Translations

Anagrams

• fast break, fastbreak