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
Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald, 29 Jan. 2025
Pont-Sonde is a major rice producer located in Haiti’s breadbasket region.
—Reuters, NBC News, 5 Oct. 2024
On the second, with the Jets in the Bills’ red zone, defensive end Greg Rousseau’s long arms tipped an Aaron Rodgers pass into the air that fell right into defensive tackle Jordan Phillips’ breadbasket.
—Joe Buscaglia, The Athletic, 29 Dec. 2024
Could the south succeed without the agricultural breadbasket of the north?
—Uzodinma Iweala, Foreign Affairs, 21 June 2022
See all Example Sentences for breadbasket 
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Cite this Entry
“Breadbasket.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/breadbasket. Accessed 15 Feb. 2025.
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breadbasket
noun
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