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
Reuters, NBC News, 24 Oct. 2024
Gang members brandishing automatic rifles stormed through a town in Haiti’s main breadbasket region, killing at least 70 and forcing over 6,000 to flee, causing widespread shock even in a country grown accustomed to outbreaks of violence.
—Reuters, NBC News, 5 Oct. 2024
Call for assistance Pont-Sonde is a major rice producer located in Haiti's breadbasket Artibonite region, built around a bridge and important crossing connecting the capital to the north.
—Harold Isaac and Sarah Morland, USA TODAY, 4 Oct. 2024
The arid climate, cool evenings, and fertile soil once made this region a breadbasket.
—Erika Page, The Christian Science Monitor, 20 Sep. 2024
See all Example Sentences for breadbasket 
Dictionary Entries Near breadbasket
Cite this Entry
“Breadbasket.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/breadbasket. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
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breadbasket
noun
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