1. To produce (offspring); give birth to or hatch. 2. To bring about; engender: “Admission of guilt tends to breed public sympathy” (Jonathan Alter, Newsweek September 25, 1989). 3a. To cause to reproduce, especially by controlled mating and selection: breed cattle.b. To develop new or improved strains in (organisms), chiefly through controlled mating and selection of offspring for desirable traits. c. To inseminate or impregnate; mate with. 4. To rear or train; bring up: a writer who was bred in a seafaring culture.5. To be the place of origin of: Austria breeds great skiers.6. To produce (fissionable material) in a breeder reactor.
INTRANSITIVE VERB:
1. To produce offspring. 2. To copulate; mate. 3. To originate and develop: Mischief breeds in bored minds.
NOUN:
1. A group of organisms having common ancestors and certain distinguishable characteristics, especially a group within a species developed by artificial selection and maintained by controlled propagation. 2. A kind; a sort: a new breed of politician; a new breed of computer.3.Offensive A person of mixed racial descent; a half-breed.
IDIOMS:
breeda scab(or scabs)on (one's) noseRegional To stir up trouble for oneself. breed up a stormNew England To become cloudy.
ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English breden, from Old English brdan. See bhreu- in Appendix I.
br
d
d), breed·ing, breeds
