bread (brĕd)
n.

1. 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.
2. 1. Food in general, regarded as necessary for sustaining life: "If bread is the first necessity of life, recreation is a close second" (Edward Bellamy).
   2. Something that nourishes; sustenance: "My bread shall be the anguish of my mind" (Edmund Spenser).
3. 1. Means of support; livelihood: earn one's bread.
   2. Slang. Money.

tr.v., bread·ed, bread·ing, breads.
To coat with bread crumbs, as before cooking: breaded the fish fillets.

[Middle English, from Old English brēad. N., sense 3b, possibly from Cockney rhyming slang bread and honey.]

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The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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