lunch

CEFRA1

/lʌnt͡ʃ/

noun · verb

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A meal eaten around the middle of the day.

  2. 02

    verb

    To eat a meal in the middle of the day.

Examples

  • I slept a little during lunch break because I was so tired.

  • She fed the remains of her lunch to the dog.

At a glance

Sits at A1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
2
Citations
5
Synonyms
1

Also pronounced

  • /lʌnʃ/

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. A break in play between the first and second sessions.

  2. Any small meal, especially one eaten at a social gathering.

  3. A light meal usually eaten around midday, notably when not as main meal of the day.

More examples

In context

  • I make lunch every day.

  • After the funeral there was a lunch for those who didn't go to the cemetery.

  • I like to lunch in Italian restaurants.

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

She ate a light blank at noon before going back to work for the afternoon.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

Recorded since 1580 in the sense “piece, hunk”. The word luncheon with the same meaning is presumably an extension on the pattern of puncheon (“cask”) and truncheon (“cudgel”). But earliest found forms of luncheon include lunshin and lunching, which are equivalent to lunch + -ing, with the suffix -ing possibly later modified to imitate a French origin. In contrast, the more common sense “light meal” is first attested for luncheon in 1652 and for lunch in 1829, so in this sense the latter is probably a shortening of the former. 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 m...