Meaning

noun the food served and eaten at one time

noun any of the occasions for eating food that occur by custom or habit at more or less fixed times

noun coarsely ground foodstuff; especially seeds of various cereal grasses or pulse

originFrom Middle English mele, from Old English melu (“meal, flour”), from Proto-West Germanic *melu, from Proto-Germanic *melwą (“meal, flour”), from Proto-Indo-European *melh₂- (“to grind, mill”). Cognates Cognate with West Frisian moal, Dutch meel, German…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0