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cereal

American  
[seer-ee-uhl] / ˈsɪər i əl /

noun

  1. any plant of the grass family yielding an edible grain, as wheat, rye, oats, rice, or corn.

  2. the grain itself.

  3. some edible preparation of it, especially a breakfast food.

adjective

  1. of or relating to grain or the plants producing it.

cereal British  
/ ˈsɪərɪəl /

noun

  1. any grass that produces an edible grain, such as oat, rye, wheat, rice, maize, sorghum, and millet

  2. the grain produced by such a plant

  3. any food made from this grain, esp breakfast food

  4. (modifier) of or relating to any of these plants or their products

    cereal farming
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
cereal Scientific  
/ sîr′ē-əl /

  1. A grass, such as corn, rice, sorghum, or wheat, whose starchy grains are used as food. Cereals are annual plants, and cereal crops must be reseeded for each growing season. Cereal grasses were domesticated during the Neolithic Period and formed the basis of early agriculture.

Other Word Forms

  • noncereal adjective

Etymology

Origin of cereal

1590–1600; < Latin Cereālis of, pertaining to Ceres; -al 1

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Sometimes I’ll make them an egg and bacon sandwich and sometimes it’s just cereal.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 30, 2026

I remember the lights went off one time when we were eating cereal.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 20, 2026

But Target's deadline to change its cereal offerings - by this spring - puts its ahead of some rivals and ahead of some food companies' multi-year timelines.

From BBC • Feb. 27, 2026

The cereal shift is part of a broader effort by Target to sharpen its merchandise assortment and rebuild momentum after several uneven years marked by weaker discretionary spending and operational challenges in stores.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 27, 2026

Took me a long time to puzzle out what that could mean—until one morning, while we were eating cereal, he told me that, sometimes, he thinks there isn’t such a thing as time.

From "King and the Dragonflies" by Kacen Callender

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.