sweetbread
sweet·bread/ˈswitˌbɹɛd/noun
sweetbread is a noun meaning “The pancreas or thymus gland of an animal, especially a lamb or calf, as food” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-W-E-E-T-B-R-E-A-D and has 2 syllables (sweet·bread), and it appears about once in every 31 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of sweetbread is sweetbreads.
What does sweetbread mean?
noun
- 1
The pancreas or thymus gland of an animal, especially a lamb or calf, as food.
- 2
Any of various other glands used as food, including the parotid gland, sublingual glands, ovaries, and testicles.
- 3
A sweetened type of bread.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce sweetbread?
- UK /ˈswiːtbɹɛd/
- US /ˈswitˌbɹɛd/
Sweetbread has 2 syllables, split sweet·bread in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-sweetbread.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of sweetbread
- sweetbreads plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is sweetbread?
Sweetbread appears about once in every 31 million words in written English, the 169,822nd 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).
Sweetbread in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense pancreas or thymus gland of an animal as food:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | (pancreas/thymus gland of calf/lamb) ris |
| German | Bries, Kalbsmilch, Milke |
| Portuguese | moleja |
| Spanish | molleja, lechecilla |
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 sweetbread come from?
Apparently from sweet + bread, though the reason is not immediately evident. Possibly connected with Dutch zwezerik, whose etymology is also unclear.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).