Word.ws English Dictionary

ploughman's lunch

ploughman's lunch noun: a light meal of bread, cheese, and pickled onions (or cucumbers), etc., especially one served in a pub at lunchtime.

ploughman's lunch: a light meal of bread, cheese, and pickled onions (or cucumbers), etc., especially one served in a...
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Noun

ploughman's lunch (plural ploughman's lunches or ploughmen's lunches)

  1. (UK) A light meal of bread, cheese, and pickled onions (or cucumbers), etc., especially one served in a pub at lunchtime.

Forms of ploughman's lunch

pluralploughman's lunches
pluralploughmen's lunches

Origin of ploughman's lunch

Originally devised by a marketing executive of the Dairy Council in a 1960-61 advertising campaign to sell English cheese and beer.

Questions about ploughman's lunch

What does ploughman's lunch mean?
Ploughman's lunch means a light meal of bread, cheese, and pickled onions (or cucumbers), etc., especially one served in a pub at lunchtime.
What part of speech is ploughman's lunch?
Ploughman's lunch is a noun.
What is the plural of ploughman's lunch?
The plural of ploughman's lunch is ploughman's lunches.

Words near ploughman's lunch in the dictionary

  1. ploughlands
  2. ploughless
  3. ploughlike
  4. ploughman
  5. ploughman's
  6. ploughman's lunch
  7. ploughman's lunches
  8. ploughman's sandwich
  9. ploughman's sandwiches
  10. ploughman's spikenard
  11. ploughman's-spikenard

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ploughman's lunch (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “ploughman's lunch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ploughman%27s_lunch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.