Meaning & use
continental breakfast
Last updated
Meaning
nouncountable or uncountable
A simple hotel breakfast of bread, rolls, croissants, jam, fruit, juice, and coffee or tea, served without hot cooked food.
Grammar: Can be countable with 'a' when you mean one serving or one meal ('a continental breakfast'), and uncountable when you mean the meal in general ('continental breakfast is included').
Patterns
- a continental breakfast
- continental breakfast is included
- serve continental breakfast
- the price includes continental breakfast
The hotel offers a continental breakfast with fresh croissants and fruit.
We had a quick continental breakfast before catching the train.
Continental breakfast is served in the lobby from seven to ten.
Word forms
| plural | continental breakfasts |
|---|
Common combinations
- a continental breakfast is included
- The room rate is low because a continental breakfast is included.
- serve a continental breakfast
- They serve a continental breakfast until ten o'clock.
- a light continental breakfast
- I prefer a light continental breakfast when I travel.
- the continental breakfast buffet
- The continental breakfast buffet had cheese, ham, and pastries.
Synonyms and how they differ
- bed and breakfast
- This means a place to stay that includes breakfast, not the meal itself; it can also mean the type of small hotel.
- buffet breakfast
- A breakfast where you serve yourself from a large table, which may include hot food as well as the continental items.
Opposites
Word family
- continental adjective
- Relating to mainland Europe, or (of a breakfast) the light European style.
Commonly confused: continental breakfast or English breakfast?
continental breakfast vs English breakfast
An English breakfast is a hot cooked meal with eggs, bacon, sausage, and toast; a continental breakfast is cold and much lighter.
Practice
Choose the best sentence.
Choose one answer.
Option B is correct: 'continental breakfast' is used uncountably here, and croissants and jam are typical items. Option A describes a cooked English breakfast, not a continental one. Options C and D are wrong because 'the' and the plural 'breakfasts' do not fit this general statement.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “continental breakfast”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.