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breast

noun · verb

Simple meaning

Either of two soft fleshy milk-secreting glandular organs on the chest of a woman.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

brehst
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈbɹɛst

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. anatomy

    Either of two soft fleshy milk-secreting glandular organs on the chest of a woman

  2. anatomy

    Either of the two organs on the front of a female human's chest, which contain the mammary glands; also the analogous organs in males.

  3. anatomy

    The chest, or front of the human thorax.

  4. The ventral portion of an animal's thorax.

  5. A choice cut of poultry, especially chicken or turkey, taken from the bird's breast; also a cut of meat from other animals, breast of mutton, veal, pork.

  6. The front or forward part of anything.

verb

  1. transitiveoften figurative

    To push against with the breast; to meet full on, oppose, face.

  2. Reach the summit (of a mountain)

  3. transitive

    To reach the top of (a hill or other prominence).

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A2 · Elementary
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Either of two soft fleshy milk-secreting glandular organs on the chest of a woman

Used this way, breast is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a clinical use: it belongs to medical description, where it is factual rather than emotive.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Specialist/technical
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Specialized
Connotation
Clinical and technical
Usage feel
Technical and specialized

Where it naturally appears

  • Medicine/healthcare
  • Science
  • Technical/specialist writing

Usage note

In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Either / chest

breast milkhuman breast

Choice / meat

chicken breast

Animal's

breast cancer

Other combinations

breast feedingbreast pocketbreast implantsleft breast

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • breastedadjectiveInflected form

    Having a breast or breasts.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • breast implantnounCompound term

    An implant for cosmetic purposes to replace a breast that has been surgically removed.

  • breast of lambnounCompound term

    A cut of lamb including the breastbone and attached muscles dressed as meat.

  • breast of vealnounCompound term

    Usually stuffed and roasted.

  • breast pocketnounCompound term

    A pocket inside of a man's coat.

  • breast cancernounCompound term

    Cancer of the breast.

  • breast-deepadverbCompound term

    Up to the breast.

Related words

Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.

  • robin redbreastnounRelated term

    Small Old World songbird with a reddish breast.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: to push against with the breast

front

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.