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Could breed mean to simply raise or it's important to make them (animals) mate?
This word kinda baffles me everytime.
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The verb "to breed" can be used in different ways in different circumstances. It CAN have the meaning of deliberately choosing and causing specific parents to have offspring - one can choose specific horses to try to produce a much faster racehorse. Different types of dog have been produced by breeding over the past centuries. But it's normal meaning is simply "to produce offspring". When rabbits were introduced into Australia, they bred too quickly and caused a lot of damage (that's the 'core meaning'). I was born and bred in Lancashire - that's definition 2, also a very common meaning. Quote:
breed vb, breeds, breeding or bred
1. to bear (offspring)
2. (tr) to bring up; raise
3. (Genetics) to produce or cause to produce by mating; propagate
4. (Breeds) to produce and maintain new or improved strains of (domestic animals and plants)
5. to produce or be produced; generate: to breed trouble; violence breeds in densely populated areas.
Collins English Dictionary
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I'm afraid I couldn't understand.
Please read the question.
Thank you.
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Penz wrote:I'm afraid I couldn't understand.
Please read the question.
Thank you. It can be either depending on the context. “I breed my champion stallion with your mare”, those particular animals were caused to mate. “I breed horses”, I raise horses.
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Penz it’s probably worth remembering that English is a language where words have different meanings depending on the context, sometimes they are very similar but subtle variations. In other cases you get homonyms like bark, the sound a dog makes and bark the outer layer of a tree or lie to tell untruths or rest horizontally on the floor.
So it’s sometimes very difficult or impossible to interpret a meaning from a short sentence without more information.
John lied before the court.
John lied before the court, in order to provide his friend with an alibi.
John lied before the court, to protest against the unfair legal system policemen had to drag him away.
The same word lied, different meaning.
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We breed dogs. What does it generally mean?
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Penz wrote:We breed dogs. What does it generally mean? It means that you have a number of dogs and you get puppies from them. This could be selective breeding of pedigree dogs where a particular male is bred with a certain female to produce high quality puppies that will win prizes at dog shows. Alternatively it could be at what we call in Britain a puppy farm, where dogs are housed in very poor conditions and live miserable lives, thankfully this is illegal and when found shut down. Without context it could be either.
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Sarrriesfan wrote: Penz it’s probably worth remembering that English is a language where words have different meanings depending on the context, sometimes they are very similar but subtle variations. In other cases you get homonyms like bark, the sound a dog makes and bark the outer layer of a tree or lie to tell untruths or rest horizontally on the floor.
So it’s sometimes very difficult or impossible to interpret a meaning from a short sentence without more information.
John lied before the court.
John lied before the court, in order to provide his friend with an alibi.
John lied before the court, to protest against the unfair legal system policemen had to drag him away.
The same word lied, different meaning. A very good point. But the sentences must be in present tense.
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If you didn't know, the word "bred" is actually the past tense for the word "breed."
Bred (or breed) means "mate".
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Hi Penz.
Sorry I've just looked again at this topic. So a very direct answer:
Yes, "breed" can mean simply "to raise".
It can mean to make animals mate - like breeding racehorses or champion dogs - but a more general meaning is just "to bring up, raise".
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Bathcoup,
What on earth are you trying to tell us?
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John lied before the court, in order to provide his friend with an alibi.
John committed perjury. - lie, lied, lied
John lied before the court, to protest against the unfair legal system policemen had to drag him away.
John lay on the ground. - lie, lay, lain
If the sentences are all in the present tense as live news commentaries, the point Sarrriesfan was trying to make stands.
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