breaking bread

Today is Thanksgiving in the US, a holiday marked primarily by having a large meal together with family and/or loved ones. In previous years, I’ve set the table with utensils, and served up some turkeys. This year, I want to make sure we include bread (and a few other bready baked goods) in our ongoing ThThTh feast.

• break bread: an expression meaning “have a meal together with people”
• “Breaking Bread,” a song by Johnny Cash
• “bumped his head on a piece of bread”: a line from the song/nursery rhyme “It’s raining, it’s pouring” in the version I learned as a child (though not in more commonly known versions). Did anyone else learn this version?
  

  It’s raining, it’s pouring
  The old man in snoring.
  Bumped his head on a piece of bread,
  And didn’t get up till morning.

• bread: a slang term for money
• breadwinner: one who earns money for a household
• dough: another term for “bread” as in “I’ll need some dough to buy bread”
• dough: a mixture of flour, water and other ingredients used to bake bread, as in “I’ll knead some dough to bake bread.”
• The Pillsbury Doughboy: an anthropomorphic wad of dough used to sell products for Pillsbury.
• half a loaf is better than no bread or half a loaf is better than none: an expression meaning, roughly “getting something is better than getting nothing”
• “Half a loaf is better than low bred:” a joke made by John Steed in The Avengers episode “The Correct Way to Kill”



• The Little Red Hen: a fairy tale about a hard-working, wheat-growing, flour-grinding, bread-baking hen who gets no help from her lazy companions, who prefer to loaf.
• “give us this day our daily bread:” a line from the Lord’s Prayer, a prayer recited by Christian church-goers
• bread line: a queue to receive food from a charitable organization
• whitebread: a slang adjective used to describe someone whose tastes are bland and culturally mainstream, or things associated with such a person. Such as white bread.
• bun in the oven: an expression meaning “knocked up”
• The Muffin Man: an English nursery rhyme. Do you know the muffin man?
• muffin top: the lumps of flesh about the waist caused by wearing pants that are too tight
• Hansel and Gretel: in this fairy tale, two children leave a trail of breadcrumbs to mark their path so that they won’t get lost in the woods. It’s not a particularly effective method.
• bread is the staff of life: a saying about the importance of bread. Etymology online says:
  

  Staff of life “bread” is from the Biblical phrase “to break the staff of bread” (Lev. xxvi.26), transl. Heb. matteh lekhem.

  I’ll take a page from Magpie and redirect you to this blogger, who poked further into the orgins of the phrase.

• “I’ll grind his bones to make my bread,” a line spoken by the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk:
  

  Fee-fi-fo-fum!
  I smell the blood of an Englishman.
  Be he ‘live, or be he dead,
  I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.

• the best thing since sliced bread: an expression said appreciatively of something really innovative, or just something really good. Often said facetiously.
• bread and circus: as the wiki says, since I’m too tired/lazy to say something on my own “is a metaphor for handouts and petty amusements that politicians use to gain popular support, instead of gaining it through sound policy”
• Project Bread, a Massachusetts anti-hunger organization. I’ll donate $5.00 to them for each commenter who includes the name of a type of bread in the comments below.

image credits: bread from wpclipart, Little Red Hen from Ella M. Beebe Picture Primer (New York: American Book Company, 1910) 87 from clipart ETC.