pertaining to or characteristic of the white middle class; bourgeois.
a typical white-bread suburban neighborhood.
bland; conventional.
First recorded in 1300–50
First recorded in 1975–80
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Refined carbohydrates include foods such as white bread, pastries, and many sugary products that have been stripped of much of their natural fiber and nutrients.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 18, 2026
A loaf of basic medium slice white bread cost 65p in 2022 but that's now risen to 74p on average in the big supermarkets.
From BBC ● May 24, 2026
Later, with the news of Hitler’s demise, she sinks into a depression, refusing food unless it’s white bread, butter and honey, all in scarce supply.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 24, 2026
But they also endorse foods like red meat and full-fat dairy, while taking a hard line against highly processed foods, added sugar and refined carbohydrates like white bread.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 7, 2026
The woman smiled at her in the kindest way, and Nhamo knew the white bread and yellow margarine were meant for the little girl.
From "A Girl Named Disaster" by Nancy Farmer
But it was her TV ads for orange juice—featuring her own children, a cartoon bird, and a lilting jingle about the “Florida sunshine tree”—that made her the nation’s leading avatar for white-bread American wholesomeness.
From Slate ● Jan. 11, 2025
The goal was to enable Disney to avoid the honky-tonk character of development around Disneyland in Anaheim, and instead keep the Florida property in perfectly coiffed white-bread comeliness.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 2023
By the end, we’ve mainly learned that Allen is the white-bread straight man to Rob’s enigmatic free spirit, which is not all that much by way of insights.
From New York Times ● Mar. 30, 2021
Being a witch looked dangerous and cool, wholly removed from my white-bread Midwestern life.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 28, 2020
But Bellizarius, the brave Generall, will flame high and cleare like a Beacon; but your Puritane Eugenius will burne blew, blew like a white-bread sop in Aqua Vitae.
From A Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 1 by Bullen, A. H. (Arthur Henry)
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.
