Feeding

How to spell feeding

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce feeding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does feeding mean?

1. verbGiving food to a person or animal, or the act of taking in food.

Feeding in a sentence

• Night feeding left the new parents exhausted by morning.

• The keeper handled the feeding of the lions before the gates opened.

Where does feeding come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows directly from the Old English verb 'fedan', meaning 'to give food to' or 'to nourish', which was the native Anglo-Saxon counterpart to the noun 'food' (Old English 'foda'). Both trace back to the same Germanic root that carried the idea of feeding and sustaining life, and you can still see the family resemblance between 'feed', 'food', and 'fodder' today. The '-ing' ending, also native English, turned the verb into a noun naming the action itself, a pattern English has used for many centuries. The double 'e' in the spelling simply reflects the long vowel sound that the word has always had, so the spelling rarely trips writers up. Because it descends from everyday Old English rather than being borrowed from Latin or French, 'feeding' has stayed remarkably stable in form for well over a thousand years.

How the word is built

• feed (Old English fedan: to nourish)
• -ing (verbal/noun suffix)