feast

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A large, elaborately prepared meal, usually for many persons and often accompanied by entertainment; a banquet.
2. n. A meal that is well prepared and abundantly enjoyed.
3. n. A periodic religious festival commemorating an event or honoring a god or saint.
4. n. Something giving great pleasure or satisfaction: a book that is a veritable feast for the mind.
5. v. To give a feast for; entertain or feed sumptuously: feasted the guests on venison.
6. v. To partake of a feast; eat heartily.
7. v. To experience something with gratification or delight: feasted on the view.
8. idiom. feast (one's) eyes on To be delighted or gratified by the sight of: We feasted our eyes on the paintings.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A festival in commemoration of some event, or in honor of some distinguished person; a set time of festivity and rejoicing: opposed to fast. In this sense the word is almost entirely confined to ecclesiastical feasts. In the Jewish church the most important feasts, apart from the sabbath, were those of the Atonement, the Passover, Tabernacles, and Pentecost. To these were subsequently added the feasts of Purim and the Dedication. In the Christian church Christmas and Easter are feasts of almost universal recognition and observance. To these many others have been added, celebrating events in the life of Christ or in the lives of the apostles, saints, and martyrs. Feasts are divided into movable and immovable, according as they occur on a specific day of the week succeeding a certain day of the month or phase of the moon, or at a fixed date. Easter is a movable feast, upon which all other movable feasts depend; Christmas is an immovable feast. In the Roman Catholic Church feasts are further divided into obligatory, and nonobligatory, and again into doubles, semi-doubles, simples, etc., according to the religious offices required to be recited in the church service.
2. n. A sumptuous entertainment or repast of which a number of guests partake; particularly, a rich or splendid public entertainment.
3. n. Any rich, delicious, or abundant repast or meal; hence, something delicious or highly agreeable, or in which some delectable quality abounds.
4. n. Synonyms Feast, Banquet, Festival. The idea of a social meal of unusual richness or abundance, for the purposes of pleasure, may be common to these words. Feast is generic; specifically, it differs from banquet in the fact that at a feast the food is abundant and choice, while at a banquet there is richness or expensiveness, and especially pomp or ceremony. The essential characteristic of a festival is concurrence in the manifestation of joy, the joyous celebration of some event, feasting being a frequent but not necessary part: as, to hold high festival. See carousal.
5. To make a feast; have a feast; eat sumptuously or abundantly.
6. Figuratively, to dwell with gratification or delight: as, to feast on a poem or a picture.
7. To provide with a feast; entertain with sumptuous fare.
8. To delight; pamper; gratify luxuriously: as, to feast the soul.

Wiktionary

1. n. A very large meal, often of a ceremonial nature.
2. n. Something delightful
3. v. intransitive To partake in a feast, or large meal.
4. v. intransitive To dwell upon (something) with delight.
5. v. transitive To hold a feast in honor of (someone).

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A festival; a holiday; a solemn, or more commonly, a joyous, anniversary.
2. n. A festive or joyous meal; a grand, ceremonious, or sumptuous entertainment, of which many guests partake; a banquet characterized by tempting variety and abundance of food.
3. n. That which is partaken of, or shared in, with delight; something highly agreeable; entertainment.
4. v. To eat sumptuously; to dine or sup on rich provisions, particularly in large companies, and on public festivals.
5. v. To be highly gratified or delighted.
6. v. To entertain with sumptuous provisions; to treat at the table bountifully.
7. v. To delight; to gratify.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a ceremonial dinner party for many people
2. n. an elaborate party (often outdoors)
3. v. gratify.
4. n. a meal that is well prepared and greatly enjoyed
5. n. something experienced with great delight
6. v. provide a feast or banquet for
7. v. partake in a feast or banquet