Shorten Breakfast To Brekkie For Maximum Accuracy

When breakfast sounds too informal, we’re happy to shorten it to brekkie. But what’s the correct way to spell that?

The Macquarie Dictionary lists brekkie as the accepted spelling, but if you wander around any cafe district, you’ll soon see signs proclaiming brekky and even breaky. Despite my authoritarian tendencies, I can live with brekky; no-one is going to mistake it for any other word, and there are plenty of other English nouns ending with a Y.

Breaky is more problematic. There’s a chance people will mispronounce it, since breakfast itself is the only English word which makes the sequence break rhyme with trek. And there’s the inescapable reminder of this infamous country hit:

Myself already knows I’m not OK with that. Accuracy matters.

Lifehacker’s Mind Your Language column offers bossy advice on improving your writing.


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