feed

feed vb Feed, nourish, pasture, graze are comparable when they mean to provide the food that one needs or desires.

Feed is the comprehensive term applicable not only to persons and animals but also to plants and, by extension, to whatever consumes something or requires something external for its sustenance

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feed the baby

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feed a family of ten on fifty dollars a week

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use bone meal to feed the chrysanthemums

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feed a furnace with coal

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Hugh's growing vanity was fed by the thought that Clara was interested in him— Anderson

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the press exploits for its benefit human silliness and ignorance and vulgarity and sensationalism, and, in exploiting it, feeds it— Rose Macaulay

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In American but not in British use feed sometimes takes for its object the thing that is fed

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feed oats to the horses

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feed coal to the furnace

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he has been feeding bread and butter to the dog— Wiggin

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Nourish implies feeding with food that is essential to growth, health, well-being, or continuing existence. Nourish more often takes as its subject the thing that serves as a sustaining or a building-up food than the person who provides such food

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milk, eggs, and meat nourish the bodies of growing boys and girls

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the humid prairie heat, so nourishing to wheat and corn, so exhausting to human beings— Cather

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freedom nourishes self-respect— Channing d. 1842

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his zeal seemed nourished by failure and by fall— Whittier

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Pasture is applied chiefly to animals and especially to domestic animals (as cattle, sheep, or horses) fed on grass

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cattle are pastured on the ridges and mounds that rise . . . above the swamps— Amer. Guide Series: La.

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Graze is often preferred specifically to pasture when the emphasis is on the use of growing herbage for food

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a field or two to graze his cows— Swift

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graze sheep on the common

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Analogous words: *nurse, nurture, foster, cherish: support, sustain, maintain (see corresponding nouns at LIVING)

Antonyms: starve

feed n fodder, forage, provender, *food, victuals, viands, provisions, comestibles