breadbaskets

Noun

breadbasket (plural breadbaskets)

1. A basket used for storing or carrying bread.
   • In theſe eaſtern countries they eat upon the plain ground, and when it is dinner-time they ſpread a round piece of leather, and lay about it tapeſtry, and ſometimes cuſhions, whereupon they ſit croſs-leg'd before they begin to eat, […] At laſt they take up the leathern table with bread and all...1738, Leonhart Rauwolf [i.e. Leonhard Rauwolf], John Ray, “Of the Great Trading and Dealing of the City of Aleppo; […]”, in Nicholas Staphorst, transl., A Collection of Curious Travels and Voyages....
2. A region which has favourable conditions to produce a large quantity of grain or, by extension, other food products; a food bowl.
   • [I]t is worth noting that if global warming produces a migration of the earth's breadbaskets, then it might damage one country's agriculture, while benefiting another's.1990, Joshua M. Epstein, Raj Gupta, Controlling the Greenhouse Effect: Five Global Regimes Compared (Brookings Occasional Papers), Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, →ISBN, page 7

   Synonyms:

   granary

3. (humorous) The abdomen or stomach, especially as a vulnerable part of the body in an attack.
   • Tom Oliver thought he'd a very heavy stake in this here affair, as he was to fight Shelton, on the 23d, for a hundred. […] (Give it them, Tom! hit them in the bread-basket!)1819 December, “The Pugilistic Ring”, in The Sporting Magazine or Monthly Calendar of the Transactions of the Turf, the Chase and Every Other Diversion Interesting to the Man of Pleasure, Enterprise...

   Synonyms:

   dumpling-depot, victualling-office