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breed

UK/ˈbɹiːd/US/ˈbɹiːd/
nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,217 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: bred, breeds

A breed is a particular variety of a domestic animal. A rare breed, breed standard, what breed is it.

A breed is not a species, since every dog from a chihuahua to a mastiff is one animal, and the differences were made by people in a few centuries. Breed standards have caused real harm where they reward shapes an animal cannot live comfortably in.

Olga Ernst · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of breed

  1. 1nounbreedA particular variety of a domestic animal.B2

    “Which breed is your cat? She has such beautiful blue eyes.”

breed is a variety.

Where it comes from

Old English bredan means to bring up or nourish, from a root meaning warmth.

  1. Middle English

    breden

  2. English, today

    breed

From Middle English breden. Middle English breden, from Old English brēdan, from Proto-Germanic brōdijaną (“to brood”), from Proto-Indo-European bʰreh₁- (“warm”). Cognate with Scots brede, breid, stq briede, West Frisian briede, Low German bröden, Dutch broeden, German brüten.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Pets & Pet Care

Practise this word

breed in the wild

  • The concept is somewhat flexible in horses, as open stud books are created for recording pedigrees of horse breeds that are not yet fully true-breeding.

    List of horse breeds

  • The German Shepherd, also known in Britain as an Alsatian, is a German breed of working dog of medium to large size.

    German Shepherd

  • Other uses of the term breed when referring to dogs include pure breeds, cross-breeds, mixed breeds and natural breeds.

    Dog breed

  • Many different terms were used to describe dogs, such as breed, strain, type, kind, and variety.

    Dog breed

  • Classed as a toy dog breed because of its small size, the Pomeranian is descended from larger Spitz-type dogs, specifically the German Spitz.

    Pomeranian dog

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.