[f. BREAD sb. + FRUIT.] The farinaceous fruit of a tree; esp. that furnished by Artocarpus incisa of the South Sea Islands, etc., of the size of a melon, and having a whitish pulp of the consistency of new bread. Also short for ‘Bread-fruit tree.’
1697. Dampier, Voy. (1729), I. 296. The Bread-fruit (as we call it) grows on a large Tree as big and high as our largest apple trees … it is as big as a Penny-loaf, when Wheat is at five shillings the Bushel.
1748. Anson, Voy., III. ii. (ed. 4), 417. A kind of fruit … called by the Indians Rima, but by us the Bread-Fruit.
1772–84. Cook, Voy. (1790), V. 1623. Covered with cocoa-palms and bread-fruit trees.
1845. Darwin, Voy. Nat., xviii. (1852), 403. The bread-fruit conspicuous from its large, glossy and deeply digitated leaves.
1866. Treas. Bot., I. 96/2. The bread-fruit … is prepared by baking it in an oven heated by hot stones.
