Lunches

How to spell lunches

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce lunches

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does lunches mean?

1. nounMore than one midday meal.
2. verbEats a midday meal, used with he, she, or it.

Lunches in a sentence

• noun

  The company provides free lunches for staff every Friday.

• verb

  He always lunches at the same café near his office.

• noun

  She packs the children's lunches the night before school.

• verb

  Whenever she lunches alone, she reads a book at the table.

Where does lunches come from?

Language of origin: Other

The word lunch is a shortening of luncheon, which appeared in English around the late 1500s and originally meant a thick piece or hunk of food, perhaps a chunk of bread or cheese eaten between main meals. Luncheon itself may have grown from the older word lunch meaning a lump or wedge, possibly influenced by the Spanish lonja, meaning a slice of ham or bacon. Over the 1700s and 1800s lunch settled into its modern sense of a light midday meal, and the longer luncheon survived mainly for formal occasions. The plural and verb form lunches simply adds the regular -es ending, which English attaches to words ending in the 'ch' sound. The spelling stays straightforward because the base word does not change; you only stack -es onto lunch.

How the word is built

• lunch (midday meal)
• -es (plural / third-person singular suffix)