feed.
To give (someone or something) food to eat.
Meaning & usage
To give (someone or something) food to eat.
Feed the dog every evening.
To eat (usually of animals).
Spiders feed on gnats and flies.
To give (someone or something) to (someone or something else) as food.
Don't feed him too much; he's still a baby.
Feed the fish to the dolphins.
To give to a machine to be processed.
Feed the paper gently into the document shredder.
To supply (a machine) with something to be processed.
We got interesting results after feeding the computer with the new data.
To satisfy, gratify, or minister to (a sense, taste, desire, etc.).
To supply with something.
Springs feed ponds with water.
To graze; to cause to be cropped by feeding, as herbage by cattle.
If grain is too forward in autumn, feed it with sheep.
To pass to.
To create the environment where another phonological rule can apply; to be applied before (another rule).
Nasalization feeds raising.
To create the syntactic environment in which another syntactic rule is applied; to be applied before (another syntactic rule).
Where this word comes from
From Middle English feden, from Old English fēdan (“to feed”), from Proto-West Germanic *fōdijan, from Proto-Germanic *fōdijaną (“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”), and more distantly with Latin pāscō (“feed, nourish”, verb) through Indo-European. More at food, fodder.
Food given to (especially herbivorous) non-human animals.
They sell feed, riding helmets, and everything else for horses.
Something supplied continuously.
a satellite feed
The part of a machine that supplies the material to be operated upon.
the paper feed of a printer
The part of a fountain pen that supplies ink to the nib.
The forward motion of the material fed into a machine.
A meal.
A gathering to eat, especially in large quantities.
They held a crab feed on the beach.
online content presented sequentially: antichronological sequence of posts or articles from a single source, especially as consumable on a platform other as originally published.
I've subscribed to the feeds of my favourite blogs, so I can find out when new posts are added without having to visit those sites.
online content presented sequentially: content intended for consumption by scrolling or swiping, especially as a home page and from multiple publishers followed or algorithmically curated
A straight man who delivers lines to the comedian during a performance.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English fede, fed, from the verb (see above). Alternatively, perhaps from Old Norse fœða (“nourishment, food”), from Proto-Germanic *fōdijaną (“to feed”), whence also Old English fēdan (“to feed”).
simple past and past participle of fee
Where this word comes from
See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.