Breadbasket
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A basket used for storing or carrying bread.
"In theſe eaſtern countries they eat upon the plain ground, and when it is dinner-time they ſpread a round piece of leather, and lay about it tapeſtry, and ſometimes cuſhions, whereupon they ſit croſs-leg'd before they begin to eat, […] At laſt they take up the leathern table with bread and all, which ſerveth them alſo inſtead of a table-cloth and bread-basket, they draw it together with a ſtring lik a purſe, and hang it up in the next corner."
- 2 a basket for serving bread wordnet
- 3 A region which has favourable conditions to produce a large quantity of grain or, by extension, other food products; a food bowl.
"[I]t is worth noting that if global warming produces a migration of the earth's breadbaskets, then it might damage one country's agriculture, while benefiting another's."
- 4 an enlarged and muscular saclike organ of the alimentary canal; the principal organ of digestion wordnet
- 5 The abdomen or stomach, especially as a vulnerable part of the body in an attack. humorous
"Tom Oliver thought he'd a very heavy stake in this here affair, as he was to fight Shelton, on the 23d, for a hundred. […] (Give it them, Tom! hit them in the bread-basket!)"
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- 6 a geographic region serving as the principal source of grain wordnet
Example
More examples""These are some of the most vulnerable places to climate change and change across river systems, but they are also the home for a number of us who live here, they are also the breadbasket of the world that feeds a number of the countries that depend on them," said Kavita Prakash-Mani, global conservation director for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)."
Etymology
From bread + basket.
Related phrases
More for "breadbasket"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.