breast
pronunciation
How to pronounce breast in British English:
UK [brest]
How to pronounce breast in American English:
US [brest]
-
- Noun:
- the front part of the trunk from the neck to the abdomen
- either of two soft fleshy milk-secreting glandular organs on the chest of a woman
- meat carved from the breast of a fowl
-
- Verb:
- meet at breast level
- reach the summit
- confront bodily
Word Origin
- breast
- breast: [OE] Breast can be traced back via prehistoric Germanic *breustam to an Indo- European base *bhrus- or *bhreus-, whose other descendants, including Old Saxon brustian ‘bud’, Middle High German briustern ‘swell’, and Irish brú ‘abdomen, womb’, suggest that the underlying reference contained in the word may be to the growth and swelling of the female breasts. By the time it reached Old English, as brēost, it had already developed a more general, non-sex-specific sense ‘chest’, but the meaning element ‘mammary gland’ has remained throughout, and indeed over the past two hundred years ‘chest’ has grown steadily more archaic.
- breast (n.)
- Old English breost "breast, bosom; mind, thought, disposition," from Proto-Germanic *breustam "breast" (cognates: Old Saxon briost, Old Frisian briast, Old Norse brjost, Dutch borst, German brust, Gothic brusts), perhaps literally "swelling" and from PIE root *bhreus- "to swell, sprout" (cognates: Middle Irish bruasach "having a broad, strong chest," Old Irish bruinne "breast"). The spelling conforms to the Scottish and northern England dialectal pronunciation. Figurative sense of "seat of the emotions" was in Old English.
Example
- 1. Breast must be small , of course .
- 2. They had darker breast markings , white bands on their wings , and longer beaks .
- 3. Twenty percent opted for their breast , with brains coming in third ( 13 percent ) .
- 4. Others peddle slimming soap or slimming navel magnets or touch me please breast enlarging cream .
- 5. If an older woman wants to regain eyelids or wants a breast that she doesn 't have to tuck into a waistband , then why not ?