Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To give food to; supply with nourishment.
  • intransitive verb To provide as food or nourishment.
  • intransitive verb To serve as food for.
  • intransitive verb To produce food for.
  • intransitive verb To provide for consumption, utilization, or operation.
  • intransitive verb To supply with something essential for growth, maintenance, or operation.
  • intransitive verb To transmit (media content) by means of a communications network or satellite, as for processing or distribution.
  • intransitive verb To minister to; gratify.
  • intransitive verb To support or promote; encourage.
  • intransitive verb To supply as a cue.
  • intransitive verb Sports To pass a ball or puck to (a teammate), especially to set up a scoring chance.
  • intransitive verb To eat. Used of animals.
  • intransitive verb To be nourished or supported.
  • intransitive verb To move steadily, as into a machine for processing.
  • intransitive verb To be channeled; flow.
  • noun Food for animals, especially livestock.
  • noun The amount of such food given at one time.
  • noun Informal A meal, especially a large one.
  • noun The act of providing food, especially to an animal.
  • noun Material or an amount of material supplied, as to a machine or furnace.
  • noun The act of supplying such material.
  • noun An apparatus that supplies material to a machine.
  • noun The aperture through which such material enters a machine.
  • noun The transmission or conveyance of published content, as by satellite, on the Internet, or by broadcast over a network of stations.
  • noun A signal or program made by means of such transmission.
  • noun Sports A pass of a ball or puck, especially to set up a scoring chance.
  • idiom (be off (one's) feed) To have lost one's appetite.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To give food to; supply with nourishment.
  • To supply; fill the requirements of; furnish material to for consumption, use, or means of operation; provide with whatever is necessary to the development, maintenance, or working of: as, canals are fed by streams and ponds; to feed a fire, a steam-engine, or a threshing-machine; to feed a lathe (by applying to the chisel the object to be turned); vanity is fed by flattery.
  • To graze; cause to be cropped by feeding, as herbage by cattle.
  • To supply for food, consumption, or operation: as, to feed out beets to cattle; to feed water to an engine; to feed work (something to be operated on) to a lathe or other machine.
  • To entertain; amuse.
  • To take food; eat.
  • To subsist; use something for sustenance or support: with on or upon.
  • To grow fat.
  • In founding, to supply extra metal to (a thick, heavy casting) while it is setting.
  • noun Food, properly for domestic or other animals; that which is eaten by a domestic animal; provender; fodder.
  • noun Pasture-ground: grazing-land.
  • noun A meal, or the act of eating.
  • noun A certain allowance of provender given: as, a feed of corn or oats.
  • noun In mech.:

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English feden, from Old English fēdan; see pā- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

fe(e) + -(e)d

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English feden, from Old English fēdan ("to feed"), from Proto-Germanic *fōdijanan (“to feed”), from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- (“to guard, graze, feed”). Cognate with West Frisian fiede ("to nourish, feed"), Dutch voeden ("to feed"), Danish føde ("to bring forth, feed"), Swedish föda ("to bring forth, feed"), Icelandic fæða ("to feed"), Latin pāscō ("feed, nourish", v). More at food.

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Examples

  • August 9, 2008 at 5:45 pm eben wen ai had mai big haus before ai downsizzled ai had lots ob plants in teh pots……can move em eeezy ai always werked…….. but ai nebber had teh kiddlets at home wif ter liddel birdie moufs open…… feed me…..feed me but ai finkso yew will enjoy gettin out n about……… den ai will retire an ai kin stay home sum wen aim not trabelin buyin beads, werkin on genealology, an meetin cheezpeeps

    reenkarnashun - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger? 2008

  • Finally, since I'll often want to read the items more than the feed, I'll add a switch parameter to extract the articles. function Get-Feed ($feed = "*", $folder, [switch] $recurse, [switch] $articles) {if (!

    MSDN Blogs 2008

  • Whilte you are at it, you can also adjust the title feed if you want the web browser to say something other than "Blog Name RSS Feed."

    unknown title 2008

  • Whilte you are at it, you can also adjust the title feed if you want the web browser to say something other than "Blog Name RSS Feed."

    unknown title 2008

  • The address of the feed is a function of the phone number you called from.

    Scripting News for 2/18/2008 « Scripting News Annex 2008

  • Subscribing to this feed is the digital equivalent of drinking from a fire-hose.

    April 2007 2007

  • Subscribing to this feed is the digital equivalent of drinking from a fire-hose.

    SF/F Authors Piped! 2007

  • And of course, as Dave Winer says, the feed is the advertisement.

    Is Mike losing his Edgeio? 2006

  • And of course, as Dave Winer says, the feed is the advertisement.

    August 2006 2006

  • High level knowledge workers in the future are likely to combine Monitor110 for what we call feed reading today with something like SystemOne for a CMS and Touchstone for alerts.

    A look inside the Monitor110 research suite Marshall Kirkpatrick 2005

  • Chicken feed, as candy corn was originally called because of its appearance, was invented by the Wunderle Candy Company in the late 1880s during a candy boom in the United States, said Susan Benjamin, a food historian and president of True Treats, a research-based candy store in West Virginia.

    Is It Time to Give Candy Corn the Respect It Deserves? Derrick Bryson Taylor 2023

Comments

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  • Good call, edwardvielmetti. Since I aspire to cater to humans, just changed the links to the Wordie feeds to read "feed," instead of "rss". Thanks!

    December 10, 2006

  • My defense for feed as noun: From a local bar "Come to Thursday's steak feed!"

    February 9, 2007

  • n.a.j.p., that's my new favorite sentence. I'm going to try to use it in conversation every day. By the way, are you coming to Thursday's steak feed?

    February 9, 2007

  • cattle feed is bought in the feed store...

    February 9, 2007