Feed

How to spell feed

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce feed

What does feed mean?

1. verbTo give food to a person, animal, or thing, or to supply something with material.
2. nounFood for animals, or a continuous supply of material or information.

Feed in a sentence

• verb

  The nurses arrive early to feed the patients before the ward rounds.

• noun

  The farmer ordered another ton of cattle feed for the winter.

• verb

  A conveyor belt feed raw timber into the cutting machine.

• noun

  Her social media feed was full of holiday photos.

Where does feed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word, descending from the Old English verb fedan, meaning 'to give food to' or 'to nourish'. It traces back to a reconstructed Proto-Germanic form fodjan, which is also the ancestor of the Dutch voeden and the German futtern, all carrying the sense of supplying food. The same Germanic stem lies behind the noun 'food' and the word 'fodder', so the cluster feed, food, and fodder are all close cousins built on the idea of nourishing. The doubled 'ee' simply reflects the long vowel that has been pronounced and written that way for many centuries. In modern times the word stretched far beyond meals: machines are fed material, and a digital news 'feed' supplies a steady stream of items, echoing the original idea of a continuous supply.

How the word is built

• feed (from Old English fedan: to nourish, give food to)