breakfast-mate

plural breakfast-mates · alternative breakfast mate · alternative breakfastmate

1. Someone with whom one eats breakfast.

   Elijah tore off a mouthful of toast, put the rest down, and looked at his breakfast-mates.

   2008, Mark J. Soppet, “One Last Haul”, in Eric T. Reynolds, editor, Return to Luna: The Winning Stories of the National Space Society’s 2008 Return to Luna Contest, Overland Park, Kan.: Hadley Rille Books, →ISBN, page 224

   3 more examples

   CIA Director George Tenet was eating breakfast at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington that morning. When he heard about the first plane, he immediately asked, “Was it an attack? It sounds like an attack,” and then told his breakfast-mate, “This is bin Laden. His fingerprints are all over it.”

   2005, Al Franken, The Truth (with Jokes), New York, N.Y.: Dutton, →ISBN, page 36

   Ollie Odom (Vada doesn’t speak much to his breakfast-mates, but he’s come to know who they are) knows better than to give his fellow patrons the satisfaction of watching him try to snap the jacket at the waist—you can’t pen a sow in a saucer, and may as well not try—but still they have to avert their eyes in kindness when he shambles down the tight aisle between tables.

   2011, Michael Griffith, “Ollie the Punt Returner”, in Trophy: A Novel, [Evanston, Ill.]: TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, →ISBN, page 144

   When he finally rose, he did not bid good-bye to his breakfast-mates, but merely forced out a smile, which looked like a grimace.

   2015, Sonia Faruqi, Project Animal Farm: An Accidental Journey into the Secret World of Farming and the Truth about Our Food, New York, N.Y.: Pegasus Books, →ISBN, page 147