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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

breadcrumb.

A tiny piece of bread, either one that falls from bread as it is cut or eaten, or one made deliberately by crumbling bread.

10 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈbɹɛdˌkɹʌm/US
  1. A tiny piece of bread, either one that falls from bread as it is cut or eaten, or one made deliberately by crumbling bread.

    in-plural
  2. A single link in a chain indicating the hierarchical location of a directory, web page or similar, used as a navigation aid.

    in-plural
  3. A fragment of data that serves to log the actions taken by a program, used in debugging.

    in-plural
  4. One in a series of clues leading to a person or place.

    figuratively · in-plural
Where this word comes from

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.

verb/ˈbɹɛdˌkɹʌm/US
  1. To sprinkle breadcrumbs on to food, normally before cooking.

    transitive
  2. To add navigational breadcrumbs to (a web page or user interface).

    intransitive
  3. To use clues or enticements to lead someone in the desired direction.

Where this word comes from

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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.