breakfast

From Middle English brekefast, brekefaste, equivalent to break +‎ fast (literally, "to end the nightly fast"). Cognate with Dutch breekvasten (“breakfast”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɹɛkfəst/

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• Audio (UK)

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• (meal eaten after religious fasting): also IPA^(key): /ˈbɹeɪkˌfæst/

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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, Shakespeare, Henry VI, part 2, act 1:

     a sorry breakfast for my lord protector

   • 1922, Ben Travers, chapter 1, in The Cuckoo in the Nest‎:

     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.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Dryden, 1847

     The wolves will get a breakfast by my death.

• 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.

နံနက်စာ====Translations====

• brunch
• jentacular

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

1. (intransitive) To eat the morning meal.
   • 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1st edition, volume II, chapter I, page 12

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

   • Prior

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

2. (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

• break one's fast

• fast break, fastbreak