lunch

Meanings

Noun

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

Verb

• To eat lunch.
• To treat to lunch.

Related

Similar words

• luncheon; nones

Origin

• Recorded since 1580; presumably short for luncheon, but earliest found also as lunshin, lunching, equivalent to -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 (see nuncheon) and altered by northern English dialect lunch (1590), which perhaps is from lump or from Spanish lonja.