Meal vs. Breakfast — What's the Difference?

A meal is an eating occasion that takes place at a certain time and includes prepared food. The names used for specific meals in English vary, depending on the speaker's culture, the time of day, or the size of the meal.

Breakfast is the first meal of the day eaten after waking from the night's sleep, usually in the morning. The word in English refers to breaking the fasting period of the previous night.

The edible whole or coarsely ground grains of a cereal grass.

A meal eaten in the morning, the first of the day

A granular substance produced by grinding.

Eat breakfast

The food served and eaten in one sitting.

The first meal of the day, usually eaten in the morning.

A customary time or occasion of eating food.

(Informal) Food traditionally consumed for breakfast, such as eggs or pancakes

Correct quotes

To eat breakfast

Move Middle English to an Middle English (enm) entry

To provide breakfast for.

Possible search real New English citations for obsolete senses}}

The first meal of the day, usually eaten in the morning.

(countable) Food that is prepared and eaten, usually at a specific time, and usually in a comparatively large quantity (as opposed to a snack).

(by extension) A meal consisting of food normally eaten in the morning, which may typically include eggs, sausages, toast, bacon, etc.

(countable) Food served or eaten as a repast.

The celebratory meal served after a wedding (and occasionally after other solemnities e.g. a funeral).

A break taken by a police officer in order to eat.

A meal eaten after a period of (now often religious) fasting.

(obsolete) A time or an occasion.

(intransitive) To eat the morning meal.

The coarse-ground edible part of various grains often used to feed animals; flour or a coarser blend than flour.

(transitive) To serve breakfast to.

A speck or spot.

The first meal in the day, or that which is eaten at the first meal.

A part; a fragment; a portion.

A meal after fasting, or food in general.

To yield or be plentiful in meal.

To break one's fast in the morning; too eat the first meal in the day.

(transitive) To defile or taint.

To furnish with breakfast.

A part; a fragment; a portion.

The first meal of the day (usually in the morning)

The portion of food taken at a particular time for the satisfaction of appetite; the quantity usually taken at one time with the purpose of satisfying hunger; a repast; the act or time of eating a meal; as, the traveler has not eaten a good meal for a week; there was silence during the meal.

Eat an early morning meal;

Grain (esp. maize, rye, or oats) that is coarsely ground and unbolted; also, a kind of flour made from beans, pease, etc.; sometimes, any flour, esp. if coarse.

Provide breakfast for

Any substance that is coarsely pulverized like meal, but not granulated.

To sprinkle with, or as with, meal.

To pulverize; as, mealed powder.

The food served and eaten at one time

Any of the occasions for eating food that occur by custom or habit at more or less fixed times

Coarsely ground foodstuff; especially seeds of various cereal grasses or pulse