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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

victual.

Food fit for human (or occasionally animal) consumption.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈvɪtəl/Received-Pronunciation[ˈvɪtɫ̩]Received-Pronunciation/ˈvɪtəl/General-American[-ɾ(ə)ɫ]General-American
  1. Food fit for human (or occasionally animal) consumption.

    archaic
  2. Food supplies; provisions.

    archaic · in-plural
  3. Edible plants.

    obsolete · specifically
  4. Grain of any kind.

    Scotland · obsolete · specifically
Where this word comes from

From Middle English vitaile, vitaylle (“food; food and drink, especially as needed for sustenance; (usually in the plural) food and drink stores or supplies; rations; provision of food and drink as a military stipend; crops”) [and other forms], from Anglo-Norman vitaile, vitaille [and other forms] and Old French vitaile, vitaille, victaille (“food, provisions, victuals”) [and other forms] (modern French victuaille), from Late Latin vīctuālia, the neuter plural of vīctuālis (“nutritional”), from Latin vīctus (“that which sustains life, diet, nourishment, provision”) + -ālis (suffix forming adjectives of relationship from nouns). Vīctus is derived from vīvō (“to live; to be alive, survive; to reside in”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʷeyh₃- (“to live”)) + -tus (suffix forming action nouns from verbs). The spelling of the modern English and French words has been influenced by Late Latin vīctuālia, though the pronunciation of the Middle English, Anglo-Norman, and Middle French words has been retained.

verb/ˈvɪtəl/Received-Pronunciation[ˈvɪtɫ̩]Received-Pronunciation/ˈvɪtəl/General-American[-ɾ(ə)ɫ]General-American
  1. To provide (military troops, a place, a ship, etc., or oneself) with a stock of victuals or food; to provision.

    archaic · reflexive · transitive
  2. To lay in or procure food supplies.

    archaic · intransitive
  3. To eat.

    archaic · intransitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English vitailen (“to provide (someone, a castle, a ship, etc., or oneself) with supplies of food, drink, or other needs; (figuratively) to load (a ship with troops and materiel); to fortify, nourish”) [and other forms], from Anglo-Norman vitailer, vitailler, and Old French vitailler, victuailler [and other forms], from vitaile, vitaille, victaille (“food, provisions, victuals”) (see further at etymology 1) + -er (a variant of -ier (suffix forming infinitives of first conjugation verbs)).

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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.