breadbasket
noun
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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
Taylor Nicioli, CNN Money, 17 Sep. 2025
He's seen recounting his tragic backstory on the breadbasket world of Rossem prior to enlisting as a galactic pirate.
—Jeff Spry, Space.com, 28 Aug. 2025
Farm workers labor in the fields south of Bakersfield, in Kern County, California's breadbasket, on April 9, 2025.
—Hugh Cameron, MSNBC Newsweek, 18 July 2025
The Capital Grille is offering a two course Mother's Day brunch that includes blueberry breadbasket for the table.
—Gege Reed, The Courier-Journal, 11 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for breadbasket
Cite this Entry
“Breadbasket.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/breadbasket. Accessed 9 Nov. 2025.
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breadbasket
noun
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