In 3 Minute French – Course 2, we learnt two words that contain the word “déjeuner”

le petit-déjeuner – the breakfast
le déjeuner – the lunch

There is actually an interesting origin story for the word “déjeuner”. Firstly, it used to be spelt with a circumflex accent over the “u”, so it was “déjeûner", and if we break this spelling of the word up, we get this:

dé + jeûner

The verb “jeûner”, in French, means “to fast”, as in not to eat anything. And if you put “dé" in front of a verb, it means to “undo” whatever that verb is. So, if “jeûner” means “to fast”, then “déjeûner" means “to undo the fast”. And if you think about it, that’s exactly what lunch is; it’s where you eat after not having eaten.

In France, breakfast is not really an important meal of the day; they simply eat a croissant or a small pastry, so “breakfast”, in French, is a “small undoing of the fast” – “petit-déjeuner”

You can imagine that spending the whole night asleep without eating anything is a form of fasting, so when you wake up and have a small bite to eat, you’re breaking the fast in a small way; hence, “petit-déjeuner”. Then, at lunch time, the proper “undoing of the fast” takes place with “déjeuner” or “lunch”

We can also break down the English word “breakfast” and see that it has an almost identical origin story. Literally, you’re “breaking” the “fast” at “breakfast”.