Fritinancy: Word of the week: Breakfastarian

March 28, 2016

Word of the week: Breakfastarian

Breakfastarian: “A person who recognizes the superiority of breakfast over other meals. A person who eats only breakfast foods” (Urban Dictionary, July 20, 2013). A blend of breakfast with the Latinate suffix -arian, denoting “association with a place or thing or idea.” Compare vegetarian, fruitarian, and breatharian (and contrast omnivore, locavore, and carnivore, in which -vore comes from a Latin root meaning “to devour.”)

In his Big Apple blog, word sleuth Barry Popik traced breakfastarian to a 2009 tweet about “breakfastarian values,” which suggests a quasi-religious connotation, as in Unitarian, seminarian, sectarian, Rastafarian, and Pastafarian).

@renagerie my breakfastarian values are challenged today because wife and I taking mom to lunch. So no breakfast.
— whall (@whall) March 5, 2009

In 2015, breakfastarian began appearing in trend stories:

Sure, folks for years have occasionally or frequently been eating traditional breakfast foods – eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, pancakes, waffles – at times other than morning. But now, those biggest fans have united for a social-media movement and dubbed themselves “breakfastarians.” – Modesto Bee, May 21, 2015

Call it the rise of the “Breakfastarians” - the dining tribe that craves breakfast food morning, noon and night. – Reuters, August 4, 2015

For “breakfastarians” — as many people who eat traditional breakfast foods at least twice a day identify — McDonald’s appears to be the restaurant of choice. – MarketWatch, August 19, 2015

The Bee article cites a website, GoBreakfastarian.com, which now redirects to a Breakfastarian Tumblr. (For more about “Go Breakfastarian,” read on.)

Above: header photo for the Breakfastarian Tumblr. The slogan is a borrowing—or outright theft, depending on your perspective—from the Cattlemen’s Beef Board and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which has used “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner” since 1992. BeefItsWhatsForDinner.com was launched in 2002.

McDonald’s may be the “restaurant of choice” for breakfastarians—especially since the chain launched its All-Day Breakfast in October 2015—but it was rival IHOP that filed for trademark protection of “Go Breakfastarian” on February 23, 2015. (According to the USPTO website, the registration hasn’t yet been approved.) It’s unclear whether IHOP is behind the Breakfastarian Tumblr or the associated Twitter account*; an IHOP press release dated May 19, 2015, provided links to both and declared support for “the breakfastarian community.”**

Not to be outdone, Quaker Oats recently announced something called Quaker Breakfast Flats—“Spring’s new snacking accessory”—with a press release that introduced a new coinage.