bread
pronunciation
How to pronounce bread in British English:
UK [bred]
How to pronounce bread in American English:
US [bred]
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- Noun:
- food made from dough of flour or meal and usually raised with yeast or baking powder and then baked
- informal terms for money
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- Verb:
- cover with bread crumbs
Word Origin
- bread
- bread: [OE] The general Germanic word for ‘bread’ in prehistoric times was what we now know as loaf; bread probably originally meant simply ‘(piece of) food’, but as bread was among the commonest foods, the word bread gradually became more specialized, passing via ‘piece of bread’, ‘broken bread’, to simply ‘bread’. Old English brēad and related Germanic forms such as German brot and Swedish bröd point to a hypothetical Germanic precursor *brautham, but the word’s ultimate origins are unknown. Some etymologists have derived it from Indo- European *bhreu-, source of English brew.
- bread (n.)
- Old English bread "bit, crumb, morsel; bread," cognate with Old Norse brauð, Danish brød, Old Frisian brad, Middle Dutch brot, Dutch brood, German Brot. According to one theory [Watkins, etc.] from Proto-Germanic *brautham, which would be from the root of brew (v.) and refer to the leavening. But OED argues at some length for the basic sense being not "cooked food" but "piece of food," and the Old English word deriving from a Proto-Germanic *braudsmon- "fragments, bits" (cognate with Old High German brosma "crumb," Old English breotan "to break in pieces") and being related to the root of break (v.). It cites Slovenian kruh "bread," literally "a piece." Either way, by c. 1200 it had replaced the usual Old English word for "bread," which was hlaf (see loaf (n.)). Slang meaning "money" dates from 1940s, but compare breadwinner. Bread-and-butter in the figurative sense of "basic needs" is from 1732. Bread and circuses (1914) is from Latin, in reference to food and entertainment provided by governments to keep the populace happy. "Duas tantum res anxius optat, Panem et circenses" [Juvenal, Sat. x.80].
- bread (v.)
- "to dress with bread crumbs," 1727, from bread (n.). Related: Breaded; breading.
Example
- 1. How will I know which bread plate is mine ?
- 2. Don 't quarrel with your bread and butter .
- 3. Was it bread that I wanted ?
- 4. Cheap bread vanished from the stores .
- 5. Roll the bread into a tight ball .