[Ads-l] Breakfast

Shawnee Moon moon.shawnee at GMAIL.COM
Sun Feb 26 20:08:54 UTC 2017


Hi. I'm curious about the word breakfast. I know it's a compound word describing the action of one's first meal of the day, in which a 'fast' is broken.

What is weird to me is that the past tense, according to MW dictionary, is "breakfasted."  The past tense of break is broke. Break is the verb, fast is the noun. Fast, obviously, is both a verb (as you can say, "I'm fasting") and a noun, but in the word breakfast it's not the verb. To me, breakfasted is clunky, but more so than "brokefast".

You "lunched" with someone?
You "suppered" or "dinnered" with someone?

I know it's easier to say, "I had breakfast" but....

~Shawnee Moon, of the Thinks-Too-Much tribe 

Mailed from the Moon 🌜
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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