Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
white meat

white meat

15 1.5
Pale meat from the breast of birds like chicken or turkey
  • noun
  • /waɪt miːt/
translation icon : carne blanca
  • Best thing about Thanksgiving is eating white meat.
  • white meat chicken
  • white meat turkey
  • white meat and dark

It drove that white meat, that breast meat demand.

Autoplay Next

Examples

  • And today, chickens have been bred to have more white meat than dark because we love our white meat.

  • What would you like, white meat or dark meat?

    She's Gotta Have It (1986)

  • Is this the white meat or the dark meat?

    The Grey (2012)

  • A nice piece of white meat, just the way you like it.

    Gacy (2003)

  • Does anybody want some more white meat?

    Peter and Vandy (2009)

  • I like the white meat.

    C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2005)

  • I got white meat, and I got dark meat.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • Chuck takes a bite of the flaky white meat.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • Chicken eaters in the United States prefer white meat; chicken eaters in South Africa prefer dark meat.

    Academic text (2005)

  • Many people prefer white meat over dark meat because it is lighter and tends to be less fatty.

Synonyms

breast
vswhite meat
99 1.0

The meat from the front of a bird like a chicken or turkey

is a broader category covering all pale poultry parts, not only chest flesh

Antonyms

dark meat
13 2.0

Meat from the legs and thighs of a bird that is darker and juicier than breast meat

How Dark

red meat
41 2.0
dark meat
13 2.0
white meat
15 1.5

Surface Forms

white meat singular
white meats plural

Morphology

white + meat

The meaning 'meat from the breast or pale parts of poultry' is directly and compositionally derived from 'white' (pale in color) modifying 'meat' (animal flesh); the adjective simply describes the meat's color/part. This adjective+noun pattern is common cross-linguistically (white vs dark meat) and follows regular English semantics, so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the MWE's meaning.

Etymology

White meat comes from the pale colour of a bird's breast and other light parts; people called these parts white meat because they look paler than the legs and thighs. That's why white meat means the pale meat from the breast and not the darker leg or thigh meat.