breakfasted

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of breakfast.

   The guests breakfasted together in the sunny dining room.

   Having breakfasted lightly, she headed straight to the office.

   Note

   One spelling serves as both the simple past and, after have or had, the perfect. The verb usually takes no object: in James Fenimore Cooper's Excursions in Italy (1838), the travelers breakfasted at a hamlet on a mountainside. Less often it is transitive and means to serve someone breakfast, and that use is easy to miss. The innkeeper breakfasted the travelers means he fed them, not that he ate with them.

   The innkeeper breakfasted the travelers before dawn.

   The whole party was breakfasted at the host's expense.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having already eaten breakfast.

   The breakfasted guests gathered in the hall, eager to begin the tour.

   By nine o'clock everyone was breakfasted and dressed.

   Oppositehungry, unfed

   Note

   A participle that has settled into describing a person's state, much as fed or rested have. It is gradable, with more breakfasted and most breakfasted as its comparative and superlative. It sits most naturally after a verb (everyone was breakfasted) or in compounds such as well-breakfasted, and it appears less often before a noun. The verb behind it is the past form of breakfast.

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