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PlainSpell

bread

/bɹɛd/noun, verb

bread is spelled B-R-E-A-D: 5 letters and one syllable. It appears 32 times per million words in written English, the 2,992nd most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, bread means “A foodstuff made by baking dough made from cereals” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of bread is breads.

How many letters and syllables are in bread?

Letters5: B-R-E-A-D
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing32 times per million words; the 2,992nd most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Pairs people search
Rhymes with
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is bread?

Bread appears 32 times per million words in written English, the 2,992nd most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce bread?

  • /brɛd/
  • /brɛːd/
  • US /bɹɛd/

Bread has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-uk-bread.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Naomi_Persephone_Amethyst_(NaomiAmethyst)-bread.wav, En-us-bread.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with bread

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

bread vs bred0 B

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

What rhymes with bread?

The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as bread from its last stressed vowel (/ɛd/):

Spelled with the same letters in another order: beard, debar.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of bread

  • breads plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • breading participle, present
  • breaded participle, past
  • breathe
  • brede

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does bread mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    A foodstuff made by baking dough made from cereals.

  2. 2

    Such foodstuff that is not difficult to chew, being not extremely hard, dense, and dry.

    We made sandwiches with the bread we bought from the bakery.

  3. 3

    Food; sustenance; support of life, in general.

  4. 4

    Any variety of bread.

    Some breads are harder and drier than others.

  5. 5

    USslangMoney.

  6. 6

    A piece of embroidery; a braid.

  7. 7

    ScotlandUKobsoleteBreadth.

verb

  1. 1

    To coat with breadcrumbs.

    breaded fish

  2. 2

    To form in meshes; net.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Bread in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchpain (baked dough made from cereals), fric, blé (slang: money), paner (to bread)
GermanBrot, Brod, Loawe (baked dough made from cereals), Kohle (slang: money), panieren (to bread)
Portuguesepão (baked dough made from cereals), massa, guito, grana (slang: money), panar (to bread)
Spanishpan (baked dough made from cereals), pasta, lana, plata (slang: money), empanar (to bread), zoquete (countable: any variety of bread)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does bread come from?

From Middle English bred, breed, from Old English brēad (“fragment, bit, morsel, crumb", also "bread”), from Proto-West Germanic *braud, from Proto-Germanic *braudą (“bread”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerw-, *bʰrewh₁- (“to boil; to brew”), from *bʰer- (“to bear, carry”). Alternatively, from Proto-Germanic *braudaz, *brauþaz (“broken piece, fragment”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰera- (“to split, beat, hew, struggle”) (see brittle).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after bread