breadbasket

noun

bread·​bas·​ket ˈbred-ˌba-skət How to pronounce breadbasket (audio)
1
slang : stomach
2
: a major cereal-producing region

Did you know?

Breadbasket has been used as slang in English since at least the mid-1700s. (It has been used even longer to mean literally a basket for holding bread.) It can refer to the stomach as an actual digestive organ ("his breadbasket rumbled with hunger"), but these days it's more commonly applied to the general stomach area ("rested her hands on her breadbasket"). No one is quite sure of the exact origins of the use, but it’s likely that there’s some connection between the basket used to hold bread and the basket where the bread ends up after a person eats it. Breadbasket has also come to refer to an area that supplies an important amount of grain ("the breadbasket of the country").

Examples of breadbasket in a Sentence

the breadbasket of the world The area is becoming the nation's breadbasket.
Recent Examples on the Web For centuries, Ukraine has been the breadbasket of Europe, thanks in large part to a band of highly fertile black soil, known as chernozem, that is ideal for growing wheat and other grains. James K. Glassman, Fortune, 31 Oct. 2023 The disaster displaced thousands of people from one of the world’s largest reservoirs, which was vital for irrigating farmland considered the breadbasket of Europe. Marc Lacey, New York Times, 18 Dec. 2023 Fighting in the huge northeastern African nation has now reached Jazeera state, the country's breadbasket with a population of 5.9 million people — half of whom are children, UNICEF said. Mithil Aggarwal, NBC News, 21 Dec. 2023 The first deep ball was textbook, stepping up in the pocket and delivered in the breadbasket just as pressure arrived. Michael Casagrande | McAsagrande@al.com, al, 3 Sep. 2023 Belleville got the game-winner when Bryce Underwood saw Julian Johnson streaking up the right sideline on an out pattern, but the ball in the breadbasket, and Johnson broke the plane of the goal line for the winning score. Wright Wilson, Detroit Free Press, 26 Aug. 2023 The breadbasket contains improbably light cornbread pancakes served with aged butter that tastes like Camembert. Brett Anderson, New York Times, 16 Oct. 2023 The crunch has been especially painful in some parts of Russia’s southern breadbasket, where fuel is crucial for gathering the harvest. Reuters, CNN, 21 Sep. 2023 All of these unpredicted shortfalls are being made worse in agricultural markets by the ongoing crisis in Ukraine—one of the world’s major breadbaskets, which has now been under attack by Russia for more than 500 days. WIRED, 4 Aug. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'breadbasket.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1753, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of breadbasket was in 1753

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Cite this Entry

“Breadbasket.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/breadbasket. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

breadbasket

noun
bread·​bas·​ket ˈbred-ˌbas-kət How to pronounce breadbasket (audio)
1
: a major cereal-producing region
2
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