Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A large, elaborately prepared meal, usually for many persons and often accompanied by entertainment; a banquet.
- n. A meal that is well prepared and abundantly enjoyed.
- n. A periodic religious festival commemorating an event or honoring a god or saint.
- n. Something giving great pleasure or satisfaction: a book that is a veritable feast for the mind.
- v. To give a feast for; entertain or feed sumptuously: feasted the guests on venison.
- v. To partake of a feast; eat heartily.
- v. To experience something with gratification or delight: feasted on the view.
- 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
- 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.
- n. A sumptuous entertainment or repast of which a number of guests partake; particularly, a rich or splendid public entertainment.
- n. Any rich, delicious, or abundant repast or meal; hence, something delicious or highly agreeable, or in which some delectable quality abounds.
- 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.
- To make a feast; have a feast; eat sumptuously or abundantly.
- Figuratively, to dwell with gratification or delight: as, to feast on a poem or a picture.
- To provide with a feast; entertain with sumptuous fare.
- To delight; pamper; gratify luxuriously: as, to feast the soul.
Wiktionary
- n. A very large meal, often of a ceremonial nature.
- n. Something delightful
- v. intransitive To partake in a feast, or large meal.
- v. intransitive To dwell upon (something) with delight.
- v. transitive To hold a feast in honor of (someone).
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A festival; a holiday; a solemn, or more commonly, a joyous, anniversary.
- 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.
- n. That which is partaken of, or shared in, with delight; something highly agreeable; entertainment.
- v. To eat sumptuously; to dine or sup on rich provisions, particularly in large companies, and on public festivals.
- v. To be highly gratified or delighted.
- v. To entertain with sumptuous provisions; to treat at the table bountifully.
- v. To delight; to gratify.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a ceremonial dinner party for many people
- n. an elaborate party (often outdoors)
- v. gratify.
- n. a meal that is well prepared and greatly enjoyed
- n. something experienced with great delight
- v. provide a feast or banquet for
- v. partake in a feast or banquet
Etymologies
- From Middle English feesten, festen, from Old French fester, from Medieval Latin festāre, from the noun. See above. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English feste, from Old French, from Vulgar Latin *fēsta, from Latin, pl. of fēstum, from fēstus, festive; see dhēs- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“This is what I call the feast and flow," said Mr Pitskiver; while Mr”
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 342, April, 1844
“She dined publicly in state; a procession of the municipal magistrates presented her a sample of the wines of the district; and, as she tasted the luscious offering, the coopers celebrated what they called a feast of Bacchus, waving their hoops as they danced round the room in grotesque figures.”
“Spirit of God, in holy eucharistical ordinances, are the marriage-feast; and the whole collective body of all those who partake of this feast is the bride, the Lamb's wife; they eat into one body, and drink into one Spirit, and are not mere spectators or guests, but coalesce into the espoused party, the mystical body of Christ.”
Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume VI (Acts to Revelation)
“The day of a feast is a day of slaughter, or sacrifice, Jam.v. 5.”
“But if we take notice how Christ was received into Jerusalem five days before the Passover, with those very rites and solemnities that were used at the feast of Tabernacles, viz. "with branches of palms," &c. chapter 12: 13, these words may seem to relate to that time; and so the word feast might not denote the individual feast that was now instant, but the kind of feast, or festival-time.”
“From the Holy Father's June 6, 2007, General Audience on St. Cyprian, "the first Bishop in Africa to obtain the crown of martyrdom", whose feast is celebrated today:”
“Opee-Kwan rose to his feet "And now, O Nam-Bok, the feast is ended, and we would listen concerning the strange things you have seen.”
“The guests are met, the feast is set: may'st hear the merry din - and the celebrated performance of the stage adaptation of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner began.”
“Praise the bounty of the harvest laid in feast before us here.”
“A picnic feast is then shared among the living and the dead, recognizing no difference between them.”
The Huffington Post: Donna Henes: Holy Halloween: A Day to Dance with Death
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘feast’.
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steffany(grade 2)
accident, agree, arrive, astronomy, attention, award, aware, balance, banner, bare, base, beach and 127 more...
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jackgrade2
accident, agree, arrive, astronomy, atlas, attention, award, aware, balance, banner, bare, base and 127 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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RELI - Genesis
Protagonists and relevant words in the Book of Creation (Source: King James Bible)
Laban, circumcise, beget, Esau, Rebekah, speckle, Sodom, Pharaoh, Canaanite, Canaan, Jacob, Lot and 1286 more...
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RELI - words with Biblical connotations
Words in the Bible evoking biblical stories or with special spiritual meaning. Proper names have been reduced to the minimum.
ark, judgement, holy, saint, baptism, spirit, love, eternal, altar, balsam, covenant, flood and 1115 more...
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Kangaroo Words 2
Kangaroo words with joey-antonyms, e.g., pest/pet
pest, friend, giant, cremate, covert, there, feast, wonderful, animosity, inattentive, electrocuted, rectitude and 54 more...
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Let's Eat!
Eating Verbs
boil, break bread, breakfast, chew, chomp, chow down, consume, cram, devour, diet, digest, dig in and 48 more...
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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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The Jumblies
They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter's morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to...sieve, winter, morn, stormy, round, drowned, cried, aloud, button, fig, sea, far and 113 more...
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savage215's Words
pipe, yankee, knickerbocker, tennis, plasma, magma, volcano, car, truck, television, tv, word and 445 more...
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asleeponthesun's Words
harlequin, exquisite, supernova, mesmerize, wretched, reciprocate, legendary, mirror, slumber, capital, monastic, synergistic and 71 more...
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MEC4 Lesson 156
accompany, process, high gear, trip, veritable, float, port, motorboat, hydroplane, on board, exhilarating, caress and 48 more...
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mplspingora's Words
truncated, sphagnum, woody, splendid, inordinate, folic, acid, you, foliate, genre, supplicate, marble and 47 more...
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festivals, celebrations and holidays
feast, christmas, ritual, pageantry, solstice, tournament, tradition, shindig, bazaar, hoedown, carnival, fiesta and 1 more...
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digitaltempest's Words
provocation, dour, verizon, objective, caveat, diaspora, naked, sploosh, queen, goddess, odalisque, dementia and 78 more...
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Peoples and culture
hopi, navajo, indigenous, catalan, quaker, inuit, yoga, dance, flemish, feast, work, folkways and 35 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for feast.

bilby
Rita's name was a feast in my mouth
Rita's body was a wedding in my blood
And I was lost in Rita for two years
And for two years she slept on my arm
And we made promises
Over the most beautiful of cups
- Mahmoud Darwish, 'Rita And The Rifle'. Sep 16, 2008
sionnach joantonym = fast Apr 25, 2008