lunch

Meaning

1. A light meal usually eaten around midday, notably when not as main meal of the day.
2. A break in play between the first and second sessions.
3. Any small meal, especially one eaten at a social gathering.

midday meal

dejeuner

main meal

light refreshments

noon meal

eat lunch

morning meal

brekker

have breakfast

light meal

groceries

cook

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Frequency

Pronounced as (IPA)

/lʌnt͡ʃ/

Recorded since 1580; presumably short for luncheon, but earliest found also as lunshin, lunching, equivalent to lunch + -ing, with the suffix -ing later modified to simulate a French origin. Lunch is possibly a derivative of lump (as hunch is from hump. See hunch for more), or represents an alteration of nuncheon, from Middle English nonechenche (“light midday meal”) (see nuncheon) and altered by northern English dialect lunch (“hunk of bread or cheese”) (1590), which perhaps is from lump or from Spanish lonja (“a slice”, literally “loin”).