breakfast
See also: break-fast and break fast
English
Sausages, bacon, fried mushrooms and tomatoes, scrambled eggs and toast at a restaurant in Singapore. These foods are eaten for breakfast in many parts of the world.
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) (file) Audio (UK) (file) - (meal eaten after religious fasting, also): (US) IPA(key): /ˈbɹeɪkˌfæst/, (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈbreɪkˌfɑːst/
Noun
breakfast (countable and uncountable, plural breakfasts)
- 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[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act I, scene iv], page 125, column 2:
- A ſorry Breakfaſt for my Lord Protector.
- 1922, Ben Travers, A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925:
- 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.
- (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.
- The celebratory meal served after a wedding (and occasionally after other solemnities e.g. a funeral).
- (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.
- c. 1693?, John Dryden, Amaryllis
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
- American breakfast
- bed-and-breakfast
- bed and breakfast
- bed-and-breakfast deal
- bed-and-breakfast transaction
- breakfast bar
- breakfast burrito
- breakfast cereal
- breakfast club
- breakfast in bed
- breakfast milk
- breakfast muffin
- breakfast of champions
- breakfast roll
- breakfast sausage
- breakfast set
- breakfast stout
- breakfast tray
- breakfast wrap
- brinner
- brunch
- brupper
- champagne breakfast
- continental breakfast
- deskfast
- dog's breakfast
- eat for breakfast
- English breakfast
- full breakfast
- full English breakfast
- Irish breakfast tea
- lumberjack breakfast
- Mexican breakfast
- New York breakfast
- Oslo breakfast
- power breakfast
- second breakfast
- wedding breakfast
Descendants
- → Afrikaans: brekfis
- → Irish: bricfeasta
- → Maori: parakuihi
- → Scottish Gaelic: bracaist
- → Welsh: brecwast
Translations
first meal of the day
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See also
- brunch
- jentacular
Verb
breakfast (third-person singular simple present breakfasts, present participle breakfasting, simple past and past participle breakfasted)
- (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 3163777, 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.
- May 14, 1689, Matthew Prior, epistle to Fleetwood Shephard Esq.
- (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
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Synonyms
- break one's fast
Translations
to eat the morning meal
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Anagrams
- fast break, fastbreak