lunch

• 昼食
• vt.昼食を食べる；昼食を出す
• 昼食を食べる。

luncheonからの略。語源は不明だが、おそらくlump, lump of foodから。bump,lunch,hump,hunchと比較される。 原語の意味は、パンやスナック菓子など、一日のうちいつでも食べられる小さな食べ物の切れ端だったが、20世紀に入って徐々に昼食に意味が固定されていった。breakfast,dinnerと比較。

lunch

lunch: [16] When lunch first appeared on the scene, at the end of the 16th century, it was used for a ‘slice or hunk of food’ (‘He shall take bread and cut it into little lunches into a pan with cheese’, Richard Surfleet, Country Farm 1600). It appears to have been borrowed from Spanish lonja ‘slice’. The roughly contemporaneous luncheon, probably just an arbitrary lengthening of lunch, came to be used in the early 17th century for a ‘snack’ (the link with ‘hunk or piece of food’ is obvious), and eventually for a ‘light meal’. Lunch returned to the language in this sense at the beginning of the 19th century, as an abbreviation of luncheon.

lunch (n.)

"mid-day repast," 1786, shortened form of luncheon (q.v.). The verb meaning "to take to lunch" (said to be from the noun) also is attested from 1786:

PRATTLE. I always to be ?ure, makes a point to keep up the dignity of the family I lives in. Wou'd you take a more ?olid refre?hment?--Have you lunch'd, Mr. Bribe?

BRIBE. Lunch'd O dear! Permit me, my dear Mrs. Prattle, to refre?h my sponge, upon the honey dew that clings to your ravi?hing pouters. O! Mrs. Prattle, this ?hall be my lunch. (ki??es)

["The Mode," in William Davies' "Plays Written for a Private Theatre," London, 1786]

But as late as 1817 the only definition of lunch in Webster's is "a large piece of food." OED says in 1820s the word "was regarded either as a vulgarism, or as a fashionable affectation." Related: Lunched; lunching. Lunch money is attested from 1868; lunch-time (n.) is from 1821; lunch hour is from 1840. Slang phrase out to lunch "insane, stupid, clueless" first recorded 1955, on notion of being "not there." Old English had nonmete "afternoon meal," literally "noon-meat."

1. We tend to meet up for lunch once a week.

私たちは週に1回昼食を共にすることが多い。

2.Use your lunch hour to have a nap in your chair.

昼食時間を利用して椅子に座って居眠りしましょう。

3.We had lunch the other day at our favorite restaurant.

先日、私たちは大好きなレストランで昼食を食べました。

4.Grace laid out the knives and forks at the lunch -table.

グレースはナイフとフォークをランチテーブルの上に置いた。

5.All through lunch he had carefully avoided the subject of the house.

昼食中、彼は慎重に家の話を避けていた。