# bread

Pronunciation: say "BRED" /bɹɛd/

## Noun

1. A food made by baking a dough of flour or meal, often with yeast; also, a particular kind of this food.
   - Simple: A baked food made from flour and water, often in loaves, or a particular kind of it.
   - _Bread has been a staple food in many cultures for thousands of years._
   - _The baker pulled warm loaves of bread from the oven at dawn._
3. Food in general; sustenance; the means of supporting life.
   - Simple: Food in general, or the things a person needs to stay alive.
   - _He toiled from dawn to dusk just to earn his bread._
   - _After the factory closed, he took any work he could find to put bread on the table for his four children._
4. Money, especially cash in hand. *(slang)*
   - Simple: Money, especially cash you can spend.
   - _She made serious bread flipping houses last year._
   - _They were short on bread after the move._

## Verb

2. To coat a food item with breadcrumbs, usually before frying or baking.
   - Simple: To cover food with breadcrumbs before cooking it.
   - _Bread the cutlets, then chill them so the coating sticks._
   - _Many cooks bread vegetables to give them a crispy crust._

## Noun

5. A piece of embroidery or decorative needlework; a braid. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: A piece of fancy stitching on cloth, or a braid.
7. Breadth; the extent of something measured from side to side. *(obsolete, Scotland, UK)*
   - Simple: How wide something is from one side to the other.

## Verb

6. To form cord or thread into meshes, as when making a net. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To form thread or cord into a net or mesh.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–4** — From Middle English bred, from Old English brēad ("fragment, morsel, crumb," also "bread"), from Proto-Germanic *braudą ("cooked food, leavened bread"), from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to boil, seethe" (see brew). It may alternatively or partly come from a root meaning "to split, break," so it is perhaps a conflation of the two. Related words include Dutch brood, German Brot, and Swedish bröd.
**Meaning 7** — Proto-Germanic *braidį̄ ("breadth") gave Old English brǣdu, which became Middle English brede, meaning "breadth, width, extent." Dutch breedte, German Breite, and Swedish bredd are cognates.
**Meanings 5–6** — The Old English verb brēdan, breġdan, meaning "to braid," became Middle English breden. This word is a variant of braid.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/bread (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).