Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A staple food made from flour or meal mixed with other dry and liquid ingredients, usually combined with a leavening agent, and kneaded, shaped into loaves, and baked.
  • noun Food in general, regarded as necessary for sustaining life.
  • noun Something that nourishes; sustenance.
  • noun Means of support; livelihood.
  • noun Slang Money.
  • transitive verb To coat with bread crumbs, as before cooking.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In net-making, to form in meshes: net. Also breathe, brede.
  • To make broad; spread.
  • noun Breadth. Also brede.
  • In Cookery, to prepare with grated bread; cover with white of eggs and bread-crumbs.
  • To clean by rubbing with dry bread or with a bread-crust, as a drawing.
  • To provide with daily bread.
  • noun A kind of food made of the flour or meal of some species of grain, by kneading it (with the addition of a little salt, and sometimes sugar) into a dough, yeast being commonly added to cause fermentation or “lightness,” and then baking it.
  • noun Figuratively, food or sustenance in general.
  • noun (b In New England, wheaten or rye bread containing an admixture of Indian meal: a variety of it is called specifically Boston brown bread.
  • noun A piece of embroidery; a braid.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb obsolete To spread.
  • transitive verb (Cookery) To cover with bread crumbs, preparatory to cooking.
  • noun An article of food made from flour or meal by moistening, kneading, and baking.
  • noun See under Aërated.
  • noun (fig.) means of living.
  • noun See Brown bread, under Brown.
  • noun See Breadfruit.
  • noun Food; sustenance; support of life, in general.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun uncountable A foodstuff made by baking dough made from cereals
  • noun countable Any variety of bread
  • noun slang money
  • verb transitive to coat with breadcrumbs

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun informal terms for money
  • noun food made from dough of flour or meal and usually raised with yeast or baking powder and then baked
  • verb cover with bread crumbs

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English brēad; see bhreu- in Indo-European roots. N., sense 3b, possibly from Cockney rhyming slang bread and honey.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English bred, breed, from Old English brēad ("fragment, bit, morsel, crumb", also "bread"), from Proto-Germanic *braudan (“cooked food, leavened bread”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerw-, *bʰrew- ("to boil, seethe"; see brew). An alternative etymology derives bread from Proto-Germanic *braudaz, *brauþaz (“broken piece, fragment”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰera- (“to split, beat, hew, struggle”) (see brittle). Perhaps a conflation of the two. Cognate with Scots breid ("bread"), Saterland Frisian Brad ("bread"), West Frisian brea ("bread"), Dutch brood ("bread"), German Brot ("bread"), Danish brød ("bread"), Swedish bröd ("bread"), Icelandic brauð ("bread"). Indoeuropean cognates include Albanian brydh ("I make crumbly, friable, soft").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word bread.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Captured at Yorktown, "520 bags bread, (weight) 59,600 lb."

    October 29, 2007

  • "Crust of Bread Found!" can be partially seen on this page.

    January 15, 2009

  • World above (heaven)

    July 24, 2009

  • According to an NPR piece I heard today, Lester Young, the great saxophonist coined the slang usage of the word "bread" to mean money. See also, "cool"

    August 28, 2009