lunch
n. C / Un. the meal you eat in the middle of the day, usually between 12:00 and 2:00. It is often smaller than dinner.
n. a meal eaten in the middle of the day, typically between breakfast and dinner. Often serves as the primary midday break in professional and educational environments.
I usually eat a sandwich for lunch at my desk.
We are meeting at a local Italian restaurant for lunch to celebrate her promotion.
While some cultures treat lunch as a brief pause for sustenance, others view it as the day's principal social event, often lasting several hours and involving multiple courses.
Recorded since 1580 in the sense “piece, hunk”. The word luncheon with the same meaning is presumably an extension on the pattern of puncheon (“cask”) and truncheon (“cudgel”). But earliest found forms of luncheon include lunshin and lunching, which are equivalent to lunch + -ing, with the suffix -ing possibly later modified to imitate a French origin. In contrast, the more common sense “light meal” is first attested for luncheon in 1652 and for lunch in 1829, so in this sense the latter is probably a shortening of the former. Lunch is possibly a derivative of lump (as hunch is from hump. See hunch for more), or represents an alteration of nuncheon, from Middle English nonechenche (“light midday meal”) (see nuncheon) and altered by northern English dialect lunch (“hunk of bread or cheese”) (1590), which perhaps is from lump or from Spanish lonja (“a slice”, literally “loin”).
Uncountable when referring to the meal in general ('have lunch'); countable when referring to a specific instance or a pre-packed meal ('a healthy lunch', 'three lunches').
I have a lunch at noonI have lunch at noonWhen referring to the daily meal as a routine activity, do not use an article.