breadcrumb
/ˈbɹɛdˌkɹʌm/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 2.06 in modern English
19
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A tiny piece of bread, either one that falls from bread as it is cut or eaten, or one made deliberately by crumbling bread.
noun
A single link in a chain indicating the hierarchical location of a directory, web page or similar, used as a navigation aid.
noun
One in a series of clues leading to a person or place.
Example Sentences
- "Breadcrumbs usually look something like this: "Home > About Us > Staff" and are positioned near the top navigation. […] The words in the breadcrumbs are links to pages at higher levels of the website."
- "If you believe the system can merrily proceed despite an assertion failure, code the exception handler to log the error, leaving debugging breadcrumbs behind, and return."
- "[…] track metrics used to improve performance, or log a series of breadcrumbs to track an application's progress, […]"
- "Before he died, James Halliday (Mark Rylance), the hermit-like, socially maladjusted tech genius who created The Oasis, hid an Easter egg somewhere in the circuitry, scattering bread crumbs that lead to its location. Find the egg, and the mogul’s fortune—along with total control of his digital fiefdom—is yours. It’s the ultimate capitalist scavenger hunt!"
- "All this breadcrumbing finished, you can put the meat on a grid over a baking dish and leave it until you are ready to cook it."
- "Said chef then proceeds to cough slimy phlegm all over the veal before it is breadcrumbed."
Etymology
From bread + crumb. The computing and figurative senses allude to the German fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, where Hansel leaves a trail of breadcrumbs to find the way back home when venturing into the woods.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈbɹɛdˌkɹʌm/