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.
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
Items such as white bread and potatoes score high, meaning they cause rapid spikes in blood sugar, while foods like whole grains and most fruits score lower and lead to slower increases.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 27, 2026
Each Friday, friends drove to Munger’s home for a potluck lunch, carrying chicken sandwiches with butter on soft white bread, the crusts sometimes removed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 27, 2025
Chef Busato on tasting a Korean milk bread, a fluffy white bread filled with cream, said he thinks it would do well in Europe.
From BBC ● Jun. 11, 2025
When Faramir had taken white bread and drunk a draught of wine, he sat upon a low chair at his father’s left hand.
From "The Return of the King" by J.R.R. Tolkien
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
But over the last few decades, it’s evolved in ways, both gritty and grand, that make it more megalopolis than white-bread suburb.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 25, 2022
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
If they be broken, let a piece of lint be spread with spermaceti-cerate, and be applied, every morning, to the part, and let a white-bread poultice be used every night.
From Advice to a Mother on the Management of Her Children by Chavasse, Pye 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.
