To bring about; engender: "Admission of guilt tends to breed public sympathy"(Jonathan Alter).
To cause to reproduce, especially by controlled mating and selection: breed cattle.
To develop new or improved strains in (organisms), chiefly through controlled mating and selection of offspring for desirable traits.
To inseminate or impregnate; mate with.
To rear or train; bring up: a writer who was bred in a seafaring culture.
To be the place of origin of: Austria breeds great skiers.
To produce (fissionable material) in a breeder reactor.
v.
intr.
To produce offspring.
To copulate; mate.
To originate and develop: Mischief breeds in bored minds.
n.
A group of organisms having common ancestors and certain distinguishable characteristics, especially a group within a species developed by artificial selection and maintained by controlled propagation.
A kind; a sort: a new breed of politician; a new breed of computer.
Offensive A person of mixed racial descent; a half-breed.
[Middle English breden, from Old English brēdan; see bhreu- in Indo-European roots.]
(brēd) 