Meaning
A substantial, nourishing meal that fully satisfies hunger; not a snack or a token plate of food but a solid, properly filling one. Coined in the United States, it is now just as current in British English. Warm and informal; stresses heartiness rather than refinement. Regional use: General English (American in origin).
Origin
An American expression. The Phrase Finder's earliest known citation is a December 1804 advertisement in the Wisconsin paper the Republican Journal: '25C buys a square meal at any time of the day at the City Bakery'. The Online Etymology Dictionary, following the OED, dates the noun by 1868 and calls it originally U.S., common from about 1880, so the 1804 advertisement antedates the dictionaries. The square element is the long-standing sense of square as fair, proper and substantial, attested from the 1560s - the same sense behind 'fair and square' and 'square deal'. The oft-repeated story that the phrase comes from square wooden plates or trenchers used in the Royal Navy is folk etymology: such plates existed, but nothing links them to the phrase, and its late appearance in print makes the naval story implausible.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a good square meal
- square meal
- three square meals
- three square meals a day
Usage Examples
- After two days of granola bars and gas-station coffee, the crew was owed a square meal.
- The shelter promises anyone who walks through its doors a square meal and a warm bed.
- You cannot expect the night shift to run on vending machines; give them a square meal before the rush.