Definition of "breakfast"

breakfast

/ˈbɹɛkfəst/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural breakfasts
1. The first meal of the day, usually eaten in the morning.
  Quotations
  A ſorry Breakfaſt for my Lord Protector.
  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, [Act I, scene iv], page 125, column 2
  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.
  1922, Ben Travers, A Cuckoo in the Nest‎, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925
2. (by extension) A meal consisting of food normally eaten in the morning, which may typically include eggs, sausages, toast, bacon, etc.
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.
  Quotations
  The wolves will get a breakfast by my death.
  c. 1693?, John Dryden, Amaryllis
verb
third-person singular simple present breakfasts, present participle breakfasting, simple past and past participle breakfasted
1. (intransitive) To eat the morning meal.
  Quotations
  First, sir, I read, and then I breakfast.
  May 14, 1689, Matthew Prior, epistle to Fleetwood Shephard Esq.
  “Oh, he set off the moment he had breakfasted! […]”
  1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter I, in Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], page 12
  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.
  1941 August, C. Hamilton Ellis, “The English Station”, in Railway Magazine, page 356
2. (transitive) To serve breakfast to.
  Quotations
  By seven-thirty she had breakfasted them, provided each with a packed lunch and Thermoses of coffee and tea
  1987, Anne McCaffrey, The Lady: A Tale of Ireland, page 269

Definition of "breakfast"

breakfast

noun

Quotations

Quotations

verb

Quotations

Quotations