King James Bible Dictionary

BREED, verb transitive preterit tense and participle passive bred.

1. To generate; to engender; to hatch; to produce the young of any species of animals. I think it is never used of plants, and in animals is always applied to the mother or dam.

2. To produce within or upon the body; as, to breed teeth; to breed worms.

3. To cause; to occasion; to produce; to originate.

Intemperance and lust breed infirmities.

Ambition breeds factions.

4. To contrive; to hatch; to produce by plotting.

Had he a heart and a brain to breed it in?

5. To give birth to; to be the native place of; as, a pond breeds fish; a northern country breeds a race of stout men.

6. To educate; to instruct; to form by education; often, but unnecessarily, followed by up; as, to breed a son to an occupation; a man bred at a university. To breed up is vulgar.

7. To bring up; to nurse and foster; to take care of in infancy, and through the age of youth; to provide for, train and conduct; to instruct the mind and form the manners in youth.

To bring thee forth with pain, with care to breed

BREED, verb intransitive To produce, as a fetus; to bear and nourish, as in pregnancy; as, a female breeds with pain.

1. To be formed in the parent or dam; to be generated, or to grow, as young before birth; as, children or young breed in the matrix.

2. To have birth; to be produced; as, fish breed in rivers.

3. To be increased by a new production.

But could youth last and love still breed

4. To raise a breed; as, to choose the best species of swine to breed from.

BREED, noun A race or progeny from the same parents or stock.

1. A cast; a kind; a race of men or other animals, which have an alliance by nativity, or some distinctive qualities in common; as a breed of men in a particular country; a breed of horses or sheep. Applied to men, it is not elegant. We use race.

2. Progeny; offspring; applied to other things than animals.

3. A number produced at once, a hatch; a brood; but for this, brood is generally used.

BREE'D-BATE, noun One that breeds or originates quarrels. [Not in use.]

BREE'DER, noun The female that breeds or produces, whether human or other animal.

1. The person who educates or brings up; that which brings up.

Italy and Rome have been the best breeders of worthy men.

2. That which produces.

Time is the nurse and breeder of all good.

3. One who raises a breed; one who takes care to raise a particular breed, or breeds, as of horses or cattle.

BREE'DING, participle present tense Bearing and nourishing, as a fetus; engendering; producing; educating.

BREE'DING, noun The act of generating or of producing.

1. The raising of a breed or breeds; as, the farmer attends to the breeding of sheep.

2. Nurture; education; instruction; formation of manners.

She had her breeding at my father's charge.

3. By way of eminence, manners; knowledge of ceremony; deportment or behavior in the external offices and decorums of social life. Hence good breeding is politeness, or the qualifications which constitute genteel deportment.