Meat, Bread

These words tell a tale; both mean food in general. The Italians and Asiatics eat little animal food, and with them the word bread stands for food; so also with the poor, whose chief diet it is; but the English consume meat very plentifully, and this word, which simply means food, almost exclusively implies animal food. In the banquet given to Joseph’s brethren, the viceroy commanded the servants “to set on bread” (Genesis xliii. 31). In Psalm civ. 27 it is said of fishes, creeping things, and crocodiles, that God giveth them their meat in due season.”

To carry off meat from the graves—i.e. to be poor as a church mouse. The Greeks and Romans used to make feasts at certain seasons, when the dead were supposed to return to their graves. In these feasts the fragments were left on the tombs for the use of the ghosts.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.