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meal

noun · verb

Simple meaning

Food that is prepared and eaten, usually at a specific time, and usually in a comparatively large quantity.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

meel
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈmil

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. countable

    Food that is prepared and eaten, usually at a specific time, and usually in a comparatively large quantity (as opposed to a snack).

  2. The food served and eaten at one time

  3. countable

    Food served or eaten as a repast.

  4. The ground-up edible part of various grains, used as a basis of food or feed; either flour or a coarser blend than flour (usage varies).

  5. Any of various similarly granular materials prepared from other sources, such as bones or wood.

  6. Any of various other granular or powdery materials, either ground by humans or occurring in nature, named figuratively after a resemblance to grain meal.

verb

  1. transitive

    To defile or taint.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Food that is prepared and eaten, usually at a specific time, and usually in a comparatively large quantity (as opposed to a snack).

Used this way, meal is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

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

More ways to use meal

  • “Breakfast is the morning meal, lunch is the noon meal, and dinner, or supper, is the evening meal.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Food

corn meal

Coarse

fish meal

Other combinations

last mealevening mealgood mealmidday meal

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • meal plannounCompound term

    A plan and a room rate for providing a room and meals to guests at a hotel.

  • meal ticketnounCompound term

    A source of income or livelihood.

  • indian mealnounCompound term

    Coarsely ground corn.

  • matzah mealnounCompound term

    Meal made from ground matzos.

  • matzo mealnounCompound term

    Meal made from ground matzos.

  • matzoh mealnounCompound term

    Meal made from ground matzos.

Related Words

Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.

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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.