brunch

Etymology

It is a blend from English breakfast + lunch,^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]} taking the beginning of the first and the end of the second.^[6][7][8] Etymonline calls it British student slang,^[10] and Tréguer traces it to Oxford University slang, where it stood beside brekker for breakfast;^[11] Hendrickson thinks it was probably a college coinage.^[12] A note in “Punch” of 1 August 1896 credited it to Guy Beringer, who had introduced it the year before in the defunct “Hunter's Weekly”,^[10][7][12] and added that at Oxford the combined meal was “brunch” when nearer the breakfast hour and blunch when nearer lunch.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

A meal eaten late in the morning in place of breakfast and lunch: 22 August 1895, in Margaret B. Wright's "Lunch at Oxford", a piece on Oxford slang in the New York Independent.^[2][11]

Semantic evolution

The verb, to eat brunch, appears in Punch in 1896,^[2][10] though the Shorter Oxford dates it to the mid 20th century.^[3] Barnhart dates the noun to 1896.^[7] In Australia and New Zealand a brunch coat is a woman's short housecoat or dressing gown,^[3][13][14] recorded in the OED from 1942.^[15]

Timeline

• 1895 – noun, in an account of Oxford slang.^[2][11][5]
• 1896 – verb, to eat brunch, in Punch.^[2][10]
• 1942 – brunch coat.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A meal eaten in the late morning that combines breakfast and lunch: We met for brunch on Sunday.^[5][8][2][6]
2. brunch coat (Australia and New Zealand): a woman's short housecoat.^[3][13][14]

Verb

1. To eat brunch.^[2][3][13]

Word family

• bruncher

Related words

• breakfast
• lunch

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
9. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
11. ^ a b c Tréguer, Pascal, Word Histories, wordhistories.net, p. "history of the portmanteau word ‘brunch’", 21 December 2016
12. ^ a b Hendrickson, Robert (2008), The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 4th ed., New York: Facts on File
13. ^ a b c Moore, Bruce, ed. (2004), The Australian Oxford Dictionary, 2nd ed., Melbourne: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b Deverson, Tony; Kennedy, Graeme, eds. (2005), The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary, Auckland: Oxford University Press
15. ^ a b Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press